World Cup 2010

Before starting this entry, which is my first in 5 months…ya sorry, I’d like to make good on a promise to my cousin Molly. CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR ENGAGEMENT!!! Tyler, you’re a lucky guy…

So as I was saying, it’s been six months since my last entry which was just shortly after La Coquille had its first fundraiser dinner. Since then, I’ve done a lot of traveling, and thus, my work has been a little sporadic. For instance, I started a business course with artisans in May and then gave them a month to actually employ what I had taught them (in this case, accounting, among other things). In that month, I went to the world cup, which was beyond words...but I guess I’ll try.

But just to sum it up, I went with my two best Peace Corps friends, Doug and Brandon. We took a bus from Cotonou to Accra. In Accra,we got to go to a shopping mall for the first time in almost a year, which was more awesome because there was pizza, video games, and a movie theatre. The whole shopping thing wasn’t for me. I became very greatful for Peace Corps Benin’s facilities because what amounted to the equivalent of their capital bureau looked more like a Vietnam military camp. The volunteers that actually stayed the thing there were stuck in a creepy hostel with nothing but a moldy bathtub that basically had the water pressure of a small child spitting on you. In short, I’ll never complain again.

The night we left for the Joburg, it was raining like crazy. In case you didn’t know, rain is to Africa as snow is to Arizona, meaning that the town literally falls into gridlock and/or shuts down. Long story short, we abandoned the car that we were getting a ride in to literally run to the airport. Luckily a lady was nice enough to give her cab to us for a little bit. We made the flight, but I almost had a mental breakdown (the thought of not going was inconceivable) and in the end, I’m pretty sure that I got an ulcer as a result.

When we got into the airport in Joburg, we were met with free cokes. It was genius on Coke’s part as I didn’t buy anything but Coke products the entire time I was in SA (except for beer). Finally attempting to find Sandro, my 4th cousin twice removed also proved a bit funny as neither of us knew what the other guy looked like. He had in his mind a tall, dark haired man, as did I. My question is, who was this guy that we must have ran into at his sister’s wedding that had impersonated the both of us? Alas, we did find each other and drove on the other side of the road to his apartment which overlooked Joburg. Getting into his car was the first of many times I tried to open the door on the driver’s side as South Africa drives on the left side of the road.

That night we had tickets to the concert w/Black Eyed Peas, Alicia Keys, and Shakira in Soweto. Surprisingly not scary, although we did get robbed in that we thought the stage would be in the middle of the arena when it was at the other end completely. The concert was still awesome and afterwards Doug and Brandon got lost. But we eventually made it back in one piece after rolling through all sorts of stop lights (or robots as their called in SA) so our car wouldn’t get hijacked. The rest of the time in Joburg we made pasta and pretty much spent the next 3 days at the mall until we went to our first match in Rustenburg: USA vs. England.

The match had been openly threatened by al-Qaeda, so I figured that if I lived through this match, I could probably make it through the entire World Cup. We were staying with a family, the Bourhills, at their farm about 30 minutes from the stadium. We had met them through Couchsurfing.org, which is probably one of the cooler things that the internet has ever come up with. They let us crash at their place for 20 bucks per night and they fed us 3 meals a day. On top of it, Vicky Bourhill was about our age, had a land rover and a press pass. What did this mean? We basically climbed into her truck with a cooler full of beer and she drove us to the stadium with her boyfriend and his “mates”. Normally you’d have to figure out how to get to a place where shuttles would drive you to the stadium (park and ride), but we drove pretty much all the way there.

Arriving at the stadium we were immersed into a sea of fans; the English singing all of their 100ish songs that they have because football is a big sport in their country, and the Americans chanting “USA! USA! USA!” I was proud to be American but a bit ashamed that we have no real team songs.

We immediately headed to the stadium, which was being circled by multiple helicopters, news crews, and loud, cheerful people. Even when heckling would take place, at least before the game, it was always in jest. This was much the case when on the way to the stadium we saw some English fans peeing in some bushes on the side of the road. Upon seeing this, Brandon cried “The British have small bladders!”, at which point, Brandon, Doug and I all jumped out of the truck and went and peed in the bushes too.

Once we got into the stadium area, which was protected by the checkpoints, Brandon disappeared to find us some beers. We thought he’d come back with 3…he came back with an entire 24 pack. I’ve never been so happy to see his goofy face.

The game was awesome. We played well, the English didn’t, and thanks to some AYSO level goalkeeping by Greene, the English keeper, we emerged 1-1; the first of four ties that I’d see during the World Cup. It was also fun singing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” when the English were singing “God Save the Queen”. Whoever thought that up, however unoriginal, was quite the heckler.

The day after the match, we headed back to the Joburg airport. We got another free ride from some friends of the Bourhills who refused to accept any kind of money from us. Arriving in Cape Town, we made our way to the house that we’d be staying in all week. It was in Oranjezicht, I believe an Afrikaans word. Once we got to the house (and check out the pictures), we were pretty stunned that we were only paying the equivalent of about 50 bucks a night. We were greeted at the door by a crazy eyed German guy wearing his Germany jersey in preparation for the game and his enormous dog. The house was actually three floors, but we were only allowed to two, sharing his kitchen, flat screen and (to Doug’s delight) Playstation 3. He only had FIFA World Cup 2010, which though I was there, had no interest in playing.

That night we got a ride in Manfred’s tiny VW Beetle to the waterfront where I saw a Paulaner bar (and a tear came to my eye). This was one of my favorite beers from Oktoberfest, which I definitely plan going back to on my trip home. Apparently, they were having a party that night for the Germany game, but you needed tickets. Rats.

Instead, Brandon, Doug and I went to a ritzy restaurant named Balthazar and spent $80 a piece on dinner. Best steak I’ve had in Africa, bar none.

As this was the first time that I’d been to the developed world, I was excited to remember what a real bar was like, and even more to see some people who (I LOVE PEACE CORPS GIRLS) didn’t look like they’d been whipped with a bamboo stick for the last year. Well we found a bar that had a pretty sizable line, so we went to check it out. We got inside and there was a live band playing, cold beer, but something was missing…I was soon after that I scanned the room and realized that we were at a boerwurst fest, which for those of you who don’t speak Afrikaans is the equivalent of a sausage fest. I guess it’s not that surprising considering we didn’t see too many girls at the games, but we were hoping something would change that night…oh well, at least we had beer!

The next day we woke up late and shuffled down to the supermarket where we enjoyed the amenities of sample dishes and a deli that was serving meat that hadn’t been cooked over an old oil drum (which is what we’re accustomed to here). It was glorious not to have to listen to blasting music or shoo flies away from my coke. Just very chill. That night Brandon (who is openly bi…how do you spell that), wanted to prove a point to us: there are more girls at gay bars than straight bars, and they are better looking too. Well hell, after being in Benin for a year, eating bush rat and fish that more so resembled snake, I guess a trip to a gay bar wouldn’t kill me…so long as nobody started thinking I was playing for Rainbow Nation’s other team.

The first place we walked into, I was greeted by a bar tender with no shirt. In a low, awkward voice, I ordered a Heineken. Doug and I seemed to be clinging to each other...but in a dude way. You know what I mean. The bar tender turned to Brandon to ask “what did you have to do to get them to come out here?” Apparently my plan was working, but Brandons was not. We were the only dudes in the bar excluding a guy that kept speaking to me in Italian, which, though exciting in the sense that I wanted to speak Italian, wasn’t in that he kept touching my arm and saying “ragazzo mio”. Well no biggie, we left to cigar bar and bought some fat Cubanos that I later found out can have stronger effects than alcohol.

I should stop for a second and mention that just uploading the pictures for this has taken about 2 hours. If you want to see more, go ahead and check out my facebook album http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2781174&id=1914730&l=cf0b35bc60

Well after a bit, Brandon got impatient and led us to “The Bronx”, which was everything I imagine a gay New York to be. The pictures on the walls of dudes with no shirts holding fire hoses and other phallic symbols put me off a bit, as it made it hard to bat my eyes away from other things like a tranny giving the show of his/her life on the stripper pole. Swimming my way through the crowd and keeping my eyes down, I finally arrived in the back of the bar, only to find our funny looking German friend surrounded by (female) models! Brandon was right! Yay! Well that didn’t change the fact that models tend to be…what’s the word…dumb, dull, boring, and generally unpleasant people. I remember the next night after the Brazil game getting a pep talk from a Canadian model in the virtues of a good (multiple partner) sex life. I’m sure you can imagine his confusion when I told him that I was (willingly) a virgin. I guess for some people, when you’re good looking, there’s no reason to be smart.

Ok moving on. Thursday we went to the England vs. Algeria game where we were rooting for a tie. You can imagine the agony of cheering for whichever team doesn’t have the ball. Every shot is terror, no matter the team. Luckily, we got our wish, another 0-0. Don’t ask me how, but after the game, we ended up in gay version of Hooters. All I can say is that I should have paid more attention to the name on the pink sign, “Beefcakes”. They had good milkshakes.

Towards end of the week (Thursday), I finally got my wish; doing some actual tourist activities. We went to Groot Constantia, the oldest vineyard in the Southern Hemisphere, and tried some really good wine. We also had a fantastic lunch and, yes, another milkshake. That afternoon we climbed Lion’s Head, which though terrifying on the way up, gives you a 360 degree view of Cape Town (pics). It was nice to get some fresh air and take a break from all the clubbing that Brandon was trying to make up for having lost in the last year.

The week wound down from there and it was time to head back to Johannesburg. Brandon stood at the jet way entrance looking longingly backwards saying, in the works of General McArthur (maybe), “I will return”. All in all, Cape Town was absolutely incredible…next time maybe my experience will be a little more peaceful…and less gay.

Arriving back in Joburg, we all felt a little worn out. We made our way back to Sandro’s house with little trouble and proceeded to pass out on his floor. Going to the little supermarket a few times, Doug and I started to notice that Brandon was looking a little rough…turns out he almost died.

Though funny to look back on, I remember being woken up in the middle of the night to whimpering because he couldn’t eat his ice cream, the only food that he had bought because he couldn’t take down solid food. Looks like trying to make up for a year of clubbing in five days took its toll. He ended up being ok, but we did have to forfeit his seat to the Brazil vs. Cote d’Ivoire game. By far the loudest (but best seated) match we got to go to. I’m going to let the video/and pictures do the rest of the talking on that one.

Our last game was a bit impromptu. Because we sold tickets to one match that would have been impossible to get to, we ended up picking up tickets to the USA vs. Ghana match. Again, we stayed with the Bourhills, but this time the match wasn’t two sided on the field or in the stadium. I felt like everyone hated me because Ghana was the last African team in the Cup and it was an African World Cup. In fact, at one point before the match, I got all confused and thought that a 7 year old girl had stolen my ticket. Long story, all you need to know is that I’ll no longer be excepting free drinks…because it’s harder to count. The game was…well we didn’t win. That’s all you need to know. We got pictures though! We ended up staying another day with our gracious hosts, the Bourhills, and it was really tough to leave such welcoming people, especially for Brandon, who told Mrs. Bourhill she was a “hottie”.

We spent our last day back at Sandro’s before catching our flight back to Ghana and then took our regular bus back to our home sweet home, Benin. Overall, it was fantastic trip, and I can’t wait to go to World Cup 2014 in Brazil!

Oh yeah, there are also some pics from the USA vs. Germany match that we put on ourselves in Benin. Blood was shed, it was fought tooth-and-nail, and ended in a tie. As a friend of mine said jokingly “It’s kinda like the Peace Corps; it’s really hard to do, and in the end, you might not have accomplished anything, but at least you have more friends!”

FINE ILL DO IT ALREADY GEEZ! Hello everyone. Has it really been 3 months!? Time flies I guess. I’ll try my best here to remember what has happened lately… La Coquille Speaking of fundraising, ILL BE COMING HOME IN SEPTEMBER. Bobby and Kayla are getting hitched, so I figure it’ll be a good time to come pitch the project at folks in person. If you want me to stop by your neighborhood, send me and email and I’ll put you on the list. Just please realize that I’m taking work days in America to do this, so if I have to pitch this while playing 18 holes or over a beer, I am willing to make sacrifices. We had a fundraiser with all the richest people in town on April 10 (I guess that was the most recent thing that happened after my last post). It was quite a stressful week that was itself preceded by several weeks of distributing invitations as well as explaining the project to people. After going to Cotonou to distribute invitations to natives of the town in addition to people that still lived there, we had invited around 50 people at $40 a head. The dinner itself was comprised of 2 dance troupes, a band called “Les AAA de la cite”, the son of our president who pretty much just sang karaoke, and a guy in a voodoo costume that danced . That week, I realized how disorganized my committee was (at least when it comes to organizing fundraisers). So as the night drew close, we divvied up the responsibilities; we had a presentation, menus, flyers, donation cards, a billboard with our logo, a sound system, the food, drinks and the program for the dinner itself to organize. Unfortunately, I’m the only one in the group that can work quickly on a computer, so the majority of that all conveniently fell on my head. Needless to say, those good ol’ college days came in handy! I painted the logo myself (looks like painting class in Italy paid off) and the 3 days before the dinner, I got about 10 hours of sleep total and was still teaching my business club. The day of the dinner itself was incredibly stressful. I had 15 volunteers coming to sleep at my house, as well as my boss and the country director coming to Kétou. In addition to that, I had to make copies of all of those fun things that I mentioned and get the courtyard that we were using for the dinner ready. I figured I could delegate setting up the courtyard to one of my other committee members, so I didn’t show up to the courtyard until after the “start time” of the dinner (which was 4pm, things here start at least 2 hours late). As if someone was playing a joke on me, the copy machine of our president was broken, so I had to take my papers to someone that does copies at about 1 per 30 seconds. On top of this, our president informed me that the person who was going to deliver the drinks couldn’t come, so we’d be getting less drinks for more money. In addition, I had to write a speech in French as well as ad-lib the presentation... in French. So when the copies were all done and organized, the presentation was complete, the music was in order, and I was dressed (can’t forget that), I made my way over to the courtyard. Upon arrival, the first thing that I realized was that the amp was far away from the screen, which was a problem because we had a video to show with sound, but the computer had to be by the projector…So I had to go buy about 20 yards of cable 1 hour after the start time of the dinner. In all this madness, as the 2 hour mark rolled around, I started to realize that there weren’t too many people there, even though we’d received promises from 50 people to show up. Quite honestly, during the entire project, I was trying to stay (foolishly) optimistic, trusting that the people on my committee knew what they were talking about. Well sadly, that is the last time I think I’ll ever be optimistic, because not only did we only get about 20 people to show up, but they showed up 3.5 hours late (at least that’s when we started the dinner). Throughout the dinner, our MC, who came highly recommended by one of our committee members, was not only extremely boring, but also couldn’t follow the program for potatoes. We actually had to bring in a ringer to help the guy out… And as if to spit in our face, Mother Nature decided to rain the day before, so this night the termites were out in swarms, so we couldn’t even turn on the lights that we brought. So I know what you’re thinking…What the hell? Ya I was too. But after the program got underway, things started to turn around. People didn’t seem to care too much about starting late (no surprise there), the food was good, and even though the band gave POSSIBLY THE WORST MUSICAL PERFOMANCE I HAVE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE, it was still music. I gave my presentation, which is included in the pictures a little bit and it seemed like people were pretty well focused on what I had to say. A few performances later, I showed the video (which is a bit of a tear jerker, I’ll put it up on facebook in a few weeks). The night gained momentum, and by the end, we had raised $1400, but profited $800. I know what you’re thinking, “Rich, I though you needed $10000 from the community to build the center”. Well…ya. But this is the first fundraiser dinner ever in the history of Kétou, so the whole attitude of giving doesn’t really exist here yet, but it never will if nobody tries. So would I say that it was a success? We made money, didn’t we? If nothing else, it got us on the map, and fundraising is still a very big part of our current process. The best news is that we’ve found a good piece of land for the building that will be given to us (which will count towards the $10000 that Kétou will have to contribute) and we have 3 other fundraising activities underway. Overall, I still do think that this is going to happen; it’s just going to be an enormous struggle. Hardest job I’ll ever love, right?

Mobile Banking and My Presentation and the Ministry of Microfinance Well I’m fairly certain that I wrote about this on my blog before, but just as a refresher, mobile banking is a system that allows you have to savings account with your mobile phone; allowing you to easily transfer money to friends and family without needing to go any further than a boutique that sells phone credit (which are everywhere) to save money onto your mobile phone. Something that is very possible but does not yet exist is the ability to make purchases with the phone (much as you would over the internet) and then have the goods delivered to the town in which they are sold. This would eliminate and incredible amount of transportation, risk, and wasted time for small business owners. So what do I have to do with this? Fraser Kinnear, who is a buddy of mine from college, first pitched the idea of running a study in Benin trying to outline spending and saving habits of Beninese people in December, and now this has evolved to also running a study for the mobile purchasing side of this. We’re hoping that a nationwide survey conducted by volunteers will help to “grease the wheels” of industry (so to speak). If we show what the weaknesses are of the current system and outline how such weaknesses could be filled in by employing this technology, we are hoping the government will do their best to facilitate the adoption of this technology and the private sector will jump at the opportunity to make some mad cash. The only problem with this is that we had no contacts in the government until by some strange reason, at our second in-service-training (which was not interesting enough to write about), the Officer of Microfinance Studies and the Officer of Employment Studies decided to show up at a forum that we were holding for our program (SED). We got lucky enough to plan a meeting with them where we could present the study and see how they could assist us. The planning for this presentation took place over the course of a week in which we were planning the staging period for the next group of volunteers. So we’d be working for 8 hours a day on that, and then we’d have to switch to putting this presentation together all in French as well as translate our surveys (which in total were 16 pages long). While everyone was enjoying their evenings at the beach, Ravi (another volunteer) and I were stuck at our crappy hotel translating endless pages of surveys (It wasn’t all bad though because a couple of the earlier nights we did get over to the beach to grab a beer and a plate of fish ‘n chips). One night was particularly funny as we were attempting to translate a particularly difficult piece of French when we got lucky enough to find a French guy in the courtyard of the hotel that was a sucker for free coke…like coca-cola. This guy’s accent was SOOOO French (or just normal to him). It’s just funny because we’re used to speaking with a lax Beninese accent, and then when this guy shows up and I have to switch to sounding all sophisticated (but in the end I think I just end up sounding like a tool…or at least that’s how I feel). Seriously, speaking French like a French person hurts my throat after a while. So after hours and hours of translating and typing and printing and correcting, we were done. For the presentation, Ravi and I decided that we’d dress to impress (which to us meant ties and shoes). Our boss, who was really excited for us, even gave us a ride over to the ministry. We rolled up expecting to go into a conference room, staring into a sea of high ranking officials. In the end, it was just the two guys that were at our IST. But NO MATTER! We took it seriously, pointing our projector at their white-washed wall as they made the effort of turning their chairs from their desks to face us in their air conditioned office. The presentation went splendidly and we left them with copies of the presentation and the survey itself. They were very interested by our plans, and though they said that there was no way that they could finance us (big surprise there), they gave their full support for the study in terms of advice as well as informing the “proper authorities” that we’d be starting this survey. If nothing else, it will give the survey credibility if we plan on publishing it somewhere. The survey should be getting launched in a few weeks (at least a “soft launch”) Business Club Well we finally finished. There was a market day for which each team had to prepare a product. It was funny that 3 of the 5 teams who originally claimed that they were going to produce something ended up just reselling whatever the product was in a different package. We had soap, cookies, and an African drink called bissape (bee-sap) that’s made from boiling flower pedals and mixing the syrup with sugar. Each team had to make a list of what supplies they needed to produce the product, as well as what their profit margin would be for each product and their sales target. I made my own type of money for the event called Kpankou Kash of which the “treasury” produced 500 bills so that each team could have a sales target. Not surprisingly, every team overestimated their sales target which on average would be around 100 bills per team if they sold all of their products. I had a team who thought that they’d capture half of the market (soap) and 3 other teams that estimated that they’d get 40% of the market. In total, if all of their estimations were correct, I would have had to produce something like 2000 bills. The 500 bills were handed out to the best students in each class and then they came to the market after they got out of class. There was a catch though. In the stack of 500 bills, I included 25 fake bills with the names changed and a different font, so at a glance they wouldn’t have noticed. The funny thing about this is that there are a lot of fake bills floating around Benin as it is, so it is actually something that they need to keep an eye out for. The goal was that the team with the most cash in the bank at the end would win, so hopefully whoever made the biggest profit would win. Well oddly enough, it ended up being a competition of who lost the least. And our winning team? They made exactly 0. It was a little disheartening, but in the end at least they got the opportunity to see how much organization goes into running a business as well as how to do some basic accounting. Also, because they all budgeted to feed the entire freaking school, we had a lot of leftovers that we just ended up eating afterwards with a little party. Plans for the future include some sort of snack bar that will probably be run like the one I did in middle school. The high school is about a 20 minute walk from anywhere, so there are a lot of supplies and other goodies that we could sell there. We’d take the profits from the snack bar and put it towards the education of each kid, thus making sure that they stay in school. The only catch is that in order to work the snack bar, they’d have to be in the business club first. Nice. I’m teaching another business course for the tailors. They are awesome! They show up on time, are attentive and responsible. I have 16 students and we’ll be finishing their course in 2 weeks (right before I head off to the world cup!).

Life In mid-march we had GAD dinner. It was a fundraiser for our Gender and Development program. We raised about $7000! Not bad f0r a group of people who make $200 a month!

My birthday was a little bit ago. I wasn’t expecting much in my town, maybe just a few beers with my friends. Well on Tuesday and Thursday nights, I have meetings with my committee of La Coquille. This particular Thursday, I had planned with a few of my buddies to go grab a beer after the meeting. Instead of just my two friends showing up, the entire staff of the CLCAM and CFAD (another microfinance institution) showed up with food and bissape. More or less it was a surprise party “Benin Style”. It was one of the first times since I’ve been here that I truly feel as though people really care about me for more than just what I offer to the community. It was nice.Me and Abdel

The Manager of the CLCAM and our Accountant

Pierre and Medard

My birthday in Parakou was ridiculous. I’ll just leave it at that (no pictures).

This evening I went for a jog in what I was pretty sure would turn into rain. It did, and not just a little. I was basically running in a shower. While all the Beninese were running for cover, they watched in shock as I jogged on by, seemingly enjoying myself (and I was!). As I was finishing up, the hardest rain arrived, and the gutters from my apartment shoot straight out the front from 3 stories up. A few of the apprentices of my landlord were putting their stuff away and one of them joked with me that I should just take a shower since I was already soaked. Well I took it seriously and what at first seemed to be a joke turned into a water fight out in front of the apartment between me, these apprentices, and some little kids. Everyone thought I was crazy for wanting to stand in the “frigid” rain, but it’s one of the few times that I haven’t been hot since I’ve arrived here. Someone even ended up lobbing a bar of soap down from the second story, so I took a shower while I was at it (don’t worry, I left my shorts on). I started doing the Footloose (right? ) dance that Chris Farley did in “Tommy Boy” when he is getting hosed off by his step brother while I was rinsing off and everyone lost it. Sure, maybe I might have sacrificed some maturity for that one, but I also think everyone realized that being a goof can be a good thing. I feel like I’m really settling into the sweet spot of my service. I speak French comfortably, I have a lot of friends in my town, I’m busy (thank God), and everything that I’m working on looks like it at least has a fighting chance of succeeding. It’s just going to be a matter of time and patience. My goal getting here was to be able to say “I can’t believe I ever considered not coming”, and though that might never come, I do think that I’m getting a lot closer. Thanks for reading!

I finally dragged myself to writing another blog. Sorry it’s been so long. To be honest though, my weeks go pretty quickly. 2 Weeks after New Years I was already back in Porto Novo for our in service training. It was great to see everyone again and hear their stories. Here are some pictures of our time together.

Here in village, I have somewhat of a routine (not anything like a normal US one), but I like to think it’s healthy.

Every morning I’m woken up by either chickens, my landlord starting his 40 year old truck, or the lady who delivers bread to my house. When joining the Peace Corps, fresh baked French baguettes delivered daily to my front door was not what I had in mind when I thought of “roughing it”, but hey, I’ll take it. Breakfast is normally peanut butter baguettes with a cup of fresh brewed coffee courtesy of my French press. I guess I’m turning more French than I thought. HAW HAWW HAWWW. Eh hem, sorry, don’t know where that came from.

After breakfast, I’ll hop in the shower and then either check my emails or cruise around town on my bike accomplishing goals 2 and 3 of Peace Corps (cultural exchange). A lot of my work now consists of planning for my classes that I teach in the afternoons (I have 3 separate ones during the week), so sometimes I’m occupied with that as well. Before I know it, its noon and the entire town shuts down, so I have no choice but to come home, work out, make lunch, and study French. After lunch, I’ll either finish prepping for my class or head out to the high Sshool in the middle of the bush where I’ve started a business club. Typically I get home late, around 9 PM. I make a lazy vegetarian dinner and shuffle off to bed. *Just a clarification, I am only vegetarian because preparing meat is a pain in the butt. I still eat meat when I feel like taking 2 hours out of my life to prepare it…normally I don’t. But I do see that it’s possible.

As for the school that I’m working with, the director is an absolute rock star. Except for this guy, every director I have met has been a pompus, greedy man only interested in what I can “give” to the school or translated, where I can find them funding. This director told me “We are the poorest school in our town, but we are proud of what we have and we take care of it.” To me, that says 2 things; 1- Whatever we have, it will be well taken care of, 2- Just because we are poor doesn’t mean we don’t have dignity. Every Friday he has an activity day where all the students tidy up the school for an hour and then have their choice of soccer, handball or dance club where they either play instruments or dance their traditional Nagot or Fon dances. His is the only school that has anything like this and it’s a pretty awesome just to watch all this happening.

The business club has been an interesting experience. It is comprised of 5 teams, each making their own products. Two teams, Lion and Rabbit, are making bissape which is the Beninese equivalent of kool-aid that is made from boiling flower pedals and then mixing the syrup with sugar. Two other teams, Scorpion and Squirrel, are making cookies. The last team, Union Sodium (I don’t know), is making “I Love You” soap. All of these teams claim to have the ability to make their respective products but I have my doubts. What we have done so far is talked about some principles of marketing (Product, Place, Price, and Publicity), and currently they are working on getting all of these figured out. The following pictures are some photos of the posters they have made.

They are required to create one for literate people and one for illiterate. The literate one was easy, but they had a hard time understanding what to do for the illiterate one. I tried to explain, using a picture of the Kool-Aid man, how Kool-Aid managed to market their product to kids who may not know how to read yet. It was funny describing a pitcher who would crash through the walls of kids’ houses to pour himself into their glasses. I’m sure they were wondering how/why this would be a successful marketing campaign. Sounds more like some of the voodoo characters you see wandering around town. Anyways, since all of them had an animal for their mascot, the soap team was the only one who had to get creative.

One thing that I’ve realized since I’ve been here is how there is such a lack of creativity. For example, their teaching methods here don’t necessarily involve engagement between the teacher and the class, but more just taking notes. This doesn’t foster any sort of creativity or problem solving, which I think is one reason for such bland and repetitive ideas. Another is that there is a big lack of humanities in these schools. No music, no art, no drama. I have started to realize their value in influencing other factors of the society, and am currently toying around with the idea of starting a drama club at this school. I just need some plays…

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When I was suggesting to the students to come up with slogans for their products, I gave them some examples that they’ve seen in the country: “Get in the Moov, Get on the Coke side of life (I honestly forgot what it was in America), Be Different”. All of these use the word “soyez” in French, which is just “be”. Well anyways, after I gave this example, I let them work for 10 minutes and all of them came back with practically the same slogans “Soyez avec le bissap energetique” or “Soyez avec notre produit”. The same thing happened with their posters; designed the same way with practically the same words. So once I started talking about changing their slogans by relating it to their product name, I started to see some creativity.

The class after that, we started picking out where we’d put the posters. I asked them to draw maps of their school and then pick the top 5 spots to put an advertisement. I told them with advertisements, much like with land value, there are three things that affect its value; location, location, and location (thanks Mom). So next week, we will put these posters up and start planning out the skits and radio commercials. Finally, we’ll have a market day where they actually make sell their products for fake money and the winning team will get soft drinks. Hooray!

As for my business course that I teach twice a week at the CLCAM, things are going well. It is tough to convince people to show up to a free course. As a result, I only have about 5 students that are actually regularly coming. Being my first time teaching the course, it’s not such a bad thing because it allows me to sift through the information that the PC has given me to actually find what is useful. I should have another starting soon with tailors that will hopefully have more students. It has been interesting teaching marketing, accounting, and personal finance when in fact I never had more than a semester’s worth of education in any of those subjects. Most the time I’m just teaching common sense (and trust me, it’s needed).

So the final project that I’m working on is La Coquille. I’ve pasted in the summary of the project. A need was expressed by several influential community members that there was a need for the support of children who either don’t have the means to attend school (as an education in Benin is covered only until the end of primary school) or don’t have a guardian with enough resources to properly feed, cloth, and educate the child. Seeing how there is only one orphanage in town, exclusively for 45 girls, an NGO was formed called “La Coquille” or “The Shell” which was charged with investigating these needs and developing a plan of action. As a result, a survey was conducted by members of La Coquille of four separate high schools in the commune. These high schools were chosen with respect to their proximity to the city, as undoubtedly the needs of a student attending high school in the country would be different than a high school in the city. After the surveys were conducted for the past 4 years, it was found that an average of about 25% of students drop out of school with their main reason being that they didn’t have the money to pay for school fees and supplies. With this need identified, La Coquille, with the support of the King, the mayor’s office, and school directors, has commenced planning for the construction of a center that would strive to accommodate the needs of children in terms of school fees, supplies, and in some cases lodging and food. The center itself will ideally contain a computer lab, dormitories, a meeting hall, a cafeteria, library, stables for animal husbandry, and a small farm. The one difference between La Coquille and the traditional setup of an orphanage is that the money used to pay for students’ school fees will be given in the form of loans, which the students will be obliged to repay through the apprenticeships provided to them by La Coquille.All money that is used to pay for student loans will be financed by the daily activities of La Coquille in the form of the sale of raised animals and crops. Though the report for sustainability has yet to be drafted, considering that a student’s annual education in Benin costs approximately $43, it would not be too difficult for these students to pay back these loans through husbandry and agriculture apprenticeships in association with La Coquille. Ways for the students to receive reductions in their respective loans would be to receive good marks in school as well as attend seminars on reproductive health, technical training with computers, and other educational sessions that would be advantageous for their common good. But make no mistake, the underlying theme of La Coquille will be that one must work in order to advance oneself (much like a chick must work to free itself from its shell which protected it for so long). Not only will the students learn valuable lessons in hard work and discipline, but they will also learn how to manage a loan and, thus, fiscal responsibility (which is one of the goals of the Peace Corps’ SED Program). The presence of the challenge that the students will face will also help to find those students who are truly passionate about their education, thus encouraging a disciplined recruitment class.

We’re currently planning a fundraiser dinner that is going to cost $40 a ticket (that’s expensive by American standards!). I figure between all the fundraisers that I’ve run with my fraternity and YoungLife, it shouldn’t be too tough to get a solid program together. Soon I’ll be posting a PCPP for this project. Though the budget hasn’t been established yet, I’m sure that I’ll be doing a lot of fundraising come April and May, hopefully having everything set in stone by early July so the center can be up and running by October when the school year starts. We’re looking to have around 30 kids who live in the center and around 100 who are supported solely for education. Though now I’m not too busy, I’m sure you can see that I will be in about 6 weeks. YIKES!

So that’s what’s up. I also got to make a presentation at the PC stakeholder’s conference in Cotonou outlining what SED volunteers do. After my speech, I was told “people thought you were French”, so I guess all this time speaking with my throat is finally starting to pay off. Here are some pics.

Life is normal (for Peace Corps standards), and I’m happy. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been here for 7 months already when my service is only 24. That means that I’m almost 1/3 done! I’ll be back in the states in a little over 6 months for Bob’s wedding (September 4th), so mark your calendars now, and find the Illini game that we are most likely to win. We’ll have another party at Uncle Fatty’s too; I’m planning on cashing in on the spam mail I keep getting from them saying that I’ve won some sort of high roller package. In 3 months I’m off to South Africa for the world cup. Here’s the schedule for my matches. GOOOOOOAAAAALLLLLLLL! Oh, and eat your heart out Tom .

Thanks for reading!

Prayer requests:

Strength for the volunteers who are struggling with their service.

Organization and cooperation we start planning the fundraising and organization of La Coquille .

Diligence in all things.

Oh ya, if you want to hear me speak French, heres a petite video I made (mainly for mom).

Happy New Year! In the past 2 days I have received some messages concerning my blog, so I guess that means there are still people paying attention to it. I've written 2 entries back to back so as not to scare too many of you away with an enormous NEW YEARS CHRISTMAS entry.Well I’ll just start off with some awesome news: I moved! I’m still in my village, but in a more central location, in a much bigger apartment with electricity and….RUNNING WATER. I know this is hardly the Peace Corps experience that all of you may have imagined, I’m with you on that too. But seriously, this place is awesome. Not only did the owner, pretty much completely remodel the place for me (and I’m talking about knocking out walls, installing sinks, shower, and toilet), but he’s also well connected with a lot of community members I know and is incredibly nice. He’s a far leap from my last landlady, who spent most of my time there trying to trick me into paying her more money for the electricity and rent. Just to sweeten the deal, he threw in 4 pLEATHER CHAIRS. I was thinking of buying a furniture set, but instead the guy saved me probably the equivalent of 200 bucks. I have asked him why he did all this several times (because I’m half expecting to get a bill for all the construction after my last owner), but the only reason that he told me was “Well, because you are American, I know how you live there, and I want you to be comfortable when you come to my place”. In effect I think that he’s just a bored, relatively wealthy old man and it was the last apartment without a bathroom. I also think that he takes pride in the fact that I’m here, which will further motivate me to do well in my work. This is a far leap from my last house that felt more like a sweltering prison (my true feelings come out now that I’m not there anymore). For instance, this afternoon was the first time that I’ve cooked lunch and was not only dry when it was done, but also ate in my dining room. Not to mention that I have a real kitchen now…with a sink! Put simply, I feel like I’m back in Europe (maybe with more bugs). Needless to say, this guy is going to be getting a really sweet present from me…I have yet to decide what that is going to be. (ideas?)

New Years in Benin makes what we do in the states look trivial, as we only party for the eve before. In Benin, they party for New Year’s eve and all of New Years Day, and even the night after. I think it has to do with how mixed the religions of the population are; they can all land on New Year’s being good. I was told that “Christmas is for kids”. New Years was spent at village for me. A few weeks earlier when I was in Cotonou, I had promised Charles, my tailor friend, that I would but us tissue if he made us the clothes. The term for this is “meme tissue” or “same tissue”. Typically when there are festivals, families and friends will get their festival uniforms, so that’s what we decided to do. I showed up at Charles’ house around 6 PM as instructed, thinking we would immediately go to dinner or a buvette to get the night started. Instead, Charles had work to do, so I just kind of hung out for 3 hours watching dubbed-to-French Spanish soap operas. I was actually happy to find that I understood most of what they were saying.

Eventually a friend of mine, Abdel, who works at a lending institution in town, gave me a call and picked me up to go to have a drink. We got to the bar that my friend Mr. Urbaine owns. Sitting there for a while, having a coke to hopefully wake me up a bit, I saw a small band of men come around the corner following a guy in a mickey mouse mask and one of those horned ski hats that we used to wear as kids. What they do is go around to each table at the buvettes and hit the drums as the guy in the goofy costume dances. Really, you don’t pay them to dance, you pay them to leave. The more you wait to pay them, the longer they stay banging these loud drums in your ears, not letting you talk to your friends. After a friend of mind slipped them a 100 cent piece, they took off. After stopping at one more buvette, I headed off to church at 11pm to find a mass that was already in progress. I didn’t feel that bad though because it was in Nagot, so I wouldn’t have understood anything anyways. As it was completely jammed, I just sat on my moto helmet outside, trying to stay awake. I failed misrebly and actually slept through the countdown to midnight (which would have consisted of me watching my watch turn from 11:59 to 12:00). Waking up at 12:03, I grumbled a bit and stumbled to a latrine to get out what I had put in an hour before.

When mass ended, the real party began and went on until about 6am. There were performances in the form of dance, song, and acting, but all of them had a bit of a hard time starting. It was strange though as seemingly every Catholic in town was at church that night, with the crowds literally pouring onto the street from the courtyard of the church. I managed to get some pictures of this. I ended up making it until 430 am but decided that I needed to turn in as I had already at this point fallen asleep at the party numerous times. The next morning, my bread lady woke me up at 8am, per usual. She’s like an alarm clock that gives you bread, and she even followed me to my other house. It is a sweet setup. New years day, I chose to get my house in order a bit. It still needs work, but until I get more paint on the walls and maybe some sort of tile on the floor, I don’t think it will ever look “proper”. Either way I’m still pleased as punch with it. Anyways, that’s all that’s going on.

Work starts again tomorrow; I’ve got to start looking a little harder to organize some formal formations as what I’ve done so far has been much more informal that I’d like. If MTN ever decides they want to work with an American, maybe I’ll be helping them a bit with the launch of their Mobile Money application in Benin, but that seems to be up to fate right now. I’ll let you know what happens. Prayer requests: Organization and focus on my work as I try to get my house up to par Diligence in all that I do Patience…with everything

Christmas quite an adventure. The original plan was to take a bus from Bohicon to Kandi, stay there for about 3 days, then, come back. As is the case with most Beninese trips, the original plan is never what happens. Like any reasonable person would do, I went the bus station in Cotonou 2 weeks in advance to buy my ticket. The bus company, Intercity, is highly regarded by volunteers as it is air conditioned, spacious (you get your own seat), has a TV (even if it is cheesy dubbed Nigerian soap operas), and is faster than pretty much any other mode of transport. 8000 CFA later, I had the ticket in hand and was ready to take my first official vacation in Africa.

Arriving in Bohicon the night before the trip, a few volunteers and I went out for dinner. I have started to notice that the first 1-2 hours of a large gathering of volunteers consists of reporting on how things are going (in the form of complaining). We are told that the first 3 months are always the hardest, but for some of the stories that I’ve heard, I have a feeling that it might be a little more than that. Common complaints for girls concern how rude and insanely determined some of the men are to make them their wife. One story sticks in my memory better than the others. Hannah was just relaxing at her house enjoying a good book one day when a man came to the door, clapping three times to signal that he was there as is customary. This wasn’t an uncommon experience as men would often come to Hannah’s front door to propose. She didn’t know him so asked what he wanted, at which point he exposed himself to her (yes, his gibblies) with a bit of a surprised expression on his face. He then proceeded to propose marriage to her through her screen door, equipment in hand. I guess you know that a country is poor when a man’s manhood is the thing that is offered as something that he can provide. Luckily the man peaceably walked away and nothing ever came of it, but I’m sure Hannah will have a “Show me your hands” policy if she ever has visitors. Because she was laughing as this story was recounted, the entire table erupted in laughter for a good 2 minutes. Hannah is one of the coolest girls in Benin, I’m convinced, as that would have been taken different ways depending on the person (up to and including leaving the country as a result). I still can’t believe that it actually happened. After a night of chicken, fries, and drinks, we headed back to Jeff’s where I slept in a tent in his courtyard. I get hot here. The next morning, we packed up and headed to the bus stop. Our bus was supposed to arrive around 9, but arrival times in Africa make about as much sense as tagging a wristwatch on a balloon and letting it sail in the wind while still expecting it to arrive on time. It showed up at 1030, as expected (at least by us). Each bus that stops in Bohicon is typically filled with people who have a bit of cash, so the hawkers literally swarm the busses, making it nearly impossible to get on or off. Jeff, Emily and I were all waiting with loads of baggage, hoping to put them under the bus. We were told that it was full, so we grudgingly made our way to the door. After fighting off a few more meat and pen salesmen, we started to climb the stairs, tickets in hand. As I reached the top of the stairs I was stopped by a man with an Intercity shirt who looked a little confused. He said “The bus is already full”. Hoping that he had just miscounted, I set down my cement sack full of electronics and proceeded to worriedly hand him my ticket. The look on his faced changed to the common Beninese astonishment; a dropped jaw accompanied by jerky, high pitched yelp. “I’m sorry, but all the seats are taken” he said. “That can’t be possible, I reserved this seat two weeks ago” “Well as you can see, everyone is in their seats and the only empty ones are for the employees who are riding the bus” “As you can see, sir, I have tickets for seats 3,4 and 5 for this bus on this date at this time” At this point, I was starting to get heated, a state of conversation that I’ve grown accustomed to. Whether it’s arguing over this, taxi fares, my electricity, or the cost of a mango, I find myself letting loose some verbal rage at least once a week. He pulled out his cell phone and explained to me that he’d call his boss to see what he could do, but in the meantime I’d have to wait outside the bus as my 3 enormous bags were blocking the isle. Jeff and Emily had been behind me but hadn’t heard any of the conversation, and upon hearing the news, Jeff’s fuse short circuited and he responded screaming at the manager of the bus, setting his things and himself down in the doorway and bringing Rosa Park’s memory to life, but this time in Benin. After the bus manager had spoke with his boss, he handed the phone to me. I’m sure whatever I said must have been a bit hard to understand, but I don’t know if I have every spoke another language so quickly and furiously in my life. The boss told me that we would have to wait until that evening at which point there would be another bus. As Peace Corps volunteers are not allowed to travel at night (for good reason), I told him how this wasn’t possible. I then demanded that our money be returned, at which point he told us that “it’s difficult”. The reasoning for this was that they do accounting…well finally this came in handy. I told him that if that’s the case, the accountants would probably be wondering why there was an extra 24,000 CFA in the bank than there should be. At this point people on the bus were starting to get agitated, which worked to our advantage, because it started putting pressure on the employees on the bus. The driver threatened to physically push Jeff off the bus, to which he replied, “Are you going to kill a Yovo? Do you know what would happen to you if you killed a Yovo?” Meanwhile I was still on the phone using the same techniques to get our money back that I had to buy my fan. The whole “if you give me a good price, I can promise my friends will come here” technique. But in this case, it was more of a “if you don’t give me my money back, I promise you that no Peace Corps volunteer will ever travel with you again”;both are empty promises but they are worth giving a shot. The manager just kind of laughed at me and apologized, saying that it was not possible. He promised that he’d make the problem better, but at this point, I couldn’t see how. I handed the phone back to the bus manager completely fumed. After delaying another 5 minutes, Jeff still holding strong and Emily guarding our luggage, the bus manager told us that he’d stay in Bohicon with us, refund the money, and find us a taxi to Parakou for the night. After realizing that there was absolutely no way we were going to get a ride from the bus, this didn’t seem like such a terrible idea, especially because Parakou was famed to have a really good workstation. Thus we conceded and waited another hour before taking a sweltering taxi to the North. Upon arriving at Parakou, I immediately noticed two things; one, that the city was very well organized (even by Italian standards), and two, that the people were much more cordial. For instance, you don’t negotiate with moto drivers before hopping on, you just get on and pay them when you arrive. This gives you the power as the customer and makes it possible for them not to rip you off. Getting to the Parakou workstation, I was reminded a little of college, as I was greeted by leather couches sitting outside on the porch and in the courtyard. In addition, a few of my friends from stage were waiting there until the next day to head up to Kandi as well, so it wasn’t too bad of a decision. The workstation has dorms as well as a bungalow with 5 beds outside. As I wanted a chance to experience the famed Harmattan cold, I chose the bungalow. After throwing down my things, we headed to the “Fresh Air” buvette which is famed for its fries and chicken, the staple of any Peace Corps volunteer on vacation in Benin. The hype was definitely worth it as the chicken was juicy, huge, and had a familiar barbecue taste that I miss so much from the states. Yum. That night we chilled (literally, for once) and had a few drinks before heading to bed. The next morning we headed to Kandi, packing what I thought at the time was too many people (9) into a 6 person taxi. The road to Kandi is scenic, with some dried plains of tall grass and other “African” looking landscapes that we’re meant to imagine from watching the Lion King. Because Kandi isn’t a tourist destination, the road had no reason to be repaired. As a result, you’re left to drive through a mine field of potholes that swallow tires whole. It’s a little like getting punched in the butt by a very big man with enormous boxing gloves. After being tenderized for about 4 hours, we finally got to Kandi. Thank God.

After greeting our long lost friends and checking out the workstation, we “did what SED volunteers do best” and headed to the buvette for dinner and merriment. This was Christmas Eve, so everyone was in a relatively good mood. We were warned that our chicken and fries would take a while to show up, so we thought the usual hour wait wouldn’t be too bad. 2 .5 hours later, the food finally arrived. Whatever! It’s Christmas! Plus we had beer. The night proceeded into a manly songfest of Christmas carols. As we were all sitting around the table bellowing in our lowest voices possible, I realized how sad it was that, besides my singing Christmas tree lights, this was the first time that I had heard Christmas carols this year. Regardless, we belted everything at the top of our lungs, worried that we’d upset the locals and get a bad reputation for the Peace Corps. Most of us had forgotten a lot of the words, so there was a lot of mumbling going on. Each song would be carefully recited, for example:

Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, blah blah blah blahh blahh blahh blahh! Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, blah blah blah blahh blahh blahh blahh! Blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah! Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, blah blah blah blahh blahh blahh blahh!We were among friends, and by the end of the night, even there was no snow on the ground, the moon shone cool white on the burning plains, and the cold Harmattan air made me happily reminisce a bit about the freezing winters that I had endured the previous 22 years in Illinois.

Apparently, after we got back and I fell asleep in hopes to make church the next day, there was a crazy party that happened. Luckily, I was safely tucked away in my tent, so nobody tried to write anything on me. Details are a bit to silly for this blog, so I’ll just have to save those for another day.

I woke up the next morning to a silent workstation. I had gone to bed at midnight, and apparently everyone had stayed up until about 4am, so my good friend Sarah, who had graciously asked me to wake her up just gave a groaning “nooooo” and rolled over. Doug, my best friend from stage, also asked me to wake him up, but in the form of relentless slaps to the head. I was happy to oblige and laugh as he frantically waved his arms, yelling and trying to defend himself from some eight armed monster attacking him in his sleep. When he finally came to, he gave me a “ehhhhhh! You guy you….”. What can I say, I’m happy to be a man of my word… especially if it means that I get to slap someone around a little bit.

Church was quick, especially for Christmas. 2 hours 15 minutes, with 15 baptisms included. I think you’d be pressed to make that happen in the states too! When we got back around 1130, everyone was getting Christmas lunch/dinner ready. The Peace Corps Liason, Chadsey, was working on about 30 kilos of beef product, trying to separate out the edible parts from the fat and bones and brains. I immediately jumped into the butcher role as I had a little experience preparing meet back at my village. For about and hour and a half, me and 3 other guys pruned our fingers with cows blood as we removed fat and skin from these sad excuses for fillets. This was all in preparation to grind it up to make burgers. I for some reason got stuck in the meat mixing role, so I had no way of holding my beer. My friends were happy to help a volunteer in need.

Linner was delicious: Cheeseburgers (real cheese), poached eggs, salad, fresh chilled pineapple, and apple crisp. The rest of the day was spent just hanging out. Eventually I decided to stay another day. The next day was just like Christmas. Just spending time with friends and speaking English can really do wonders for your state of mind. Before leaving my village before, I actually started to think that I was losing my mind a little bit. I had a run in with a man speaking Nagot to me. He was just saying “it’s been 3 days” which means “I haven’t seen you in a while”, but when I realized what it meant I pointed at his face and started laughing hysterically… I think he was a little insulted. Luckily, I was back to my good old self. Later during the day, Rohan, one of the older volunteers, asked me if I wanted to go for a bike ride. I was happy to get away from my smoker friends, who seem to light up the instant they see each other.

The girl whose bike I took is probably just at 5’, so her mountain bike felt more like a BMX. As Rohan I were riding down a nicely paved road, we looked left towards a big hill we thought would be great to check out, so we used the mountain ability of our bikes. We ended up finding a quarry that they had apparently used to construct the road that went west from Kandi. It was nice, but what was nicer was that it gave us a way to get to the top of the hill via bike. The hole time going up I was on the lookout for snakes, but as I remembered from my camping days in the Carolinas (literally like 6 days total), snakes normally only strike when cornered and run away from noise, so I trusted that the rumbling of our tires would do the job. Getting to the top of the hill, we were met with an incredible view, and decided it was time to take my “sitting in a tree” photo that you all can look at and be jealous. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

So that was about the extent of extremely eventful things that happened. The next day we ended up jamming 11 people into that same 6 seat cab, but this time with the back two seats having one person reclined on the laps of the other people. This experience was preceded by another heated yelling match between me and the taxi manager who was again trying to rip off the Yovos. So that is all. Overall, it a wonderful trip filled with ridiculous and increasingly predictable hardships, but it was good to see my friends again.

Happy Holidays everyone! I hope you are all enjoying the cold weather in the States. It has moved here from really hot and muggy to really hot and dry, so I guess some change is better than none. Since my last blog a lot has happened. First of all, thanksgiving. I headed up to Dassa to celebrate with the other volunteers in the area. Tony, who is the volunteer that we visited, has the most picturesque Peace Corps post I can imagine. It is set at the foot of what is arguably a mountain, although some might call it an enormous hill. We got the chance to climb it and check out what is by far the best view that I have seen since I have been here. I don’t think the camera really does it justice, but let’s just say that I started singing “Lion King” songs when we got to the top. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

Tony also has a German volunteer that lives right behind his house, so he gets to have a dose of that clear German thinking that I love so much (I know what you're thinking "But Rich! It’s not natural...having another volunteer nearby"). He works at a butterfly sanctuary, whose justification for existing was “because all the other animals are already protected and people would just kill butterflies for fun”. I got that explanation from an employee there. Quite honestly, as a tourist, which is what I was, I wouldn’t have cared too much if it was a sanctuary for albino pigeons as long as they had a fridge and helped us to prepare the turkey. As a volunteer though, I can’t help that there was probably a better use for that money…say, maybe people? Anyways, we made the turkey Beninese style; indiscriminately chunked and fried with onions. Surprisingly, it was delicious! I made mashed potatoes when some of the other volunteers brought stuffing, cakes, and other goodies. Because egg beaters were in short supply, I used this giant plunger looking thing to squash all of the potatoes. I got to lick it afterwards too! It was a wonderful break.? As for my work, things have taken an interesting turn. It turns out that the women’s groups that I have been working with indeed just wanted to see an American there, because every time I would ask them if they want to start the accounting formations, they’d always say that they don’t have the money to buy the supplies. This left me in a bit of a pickle as I’d have to bring these supplies every time to the meetings yet they would remain unused. Pretty much, I have given up on trying to teach them for now because they don’t seem all too interested, not to mention that keeping books on 3000 CFA of bread that is sold for 3500 CFA might be more effort than it’s worth. I’ll keep helping Madeleine with the savings and credit part, but I’ve begun searching elsewhere for work with accounting. On the brighter side, I have my first real formation with the artisans next week which I really think will be interesting…as the artisans actually seem interested. The only disadvantage of working with the artisans that they have no concept of punctuality and proper planning. This characteristic follows through the ranks all the way up to the president, who is 1.5 for 5 on planned meetings right now. The .5 is for when all the artisans were present, but at a different location listening to a different presentation. I clutch to hope though, as I was told that the first thing I needed to put in my mental suitcase was patience. The only thing that worries me about all this is that this sort of behavior is rubbing off on me. I have recently lost 2 notebooks and a pair of cheap sunglasses. Maybe its just the malaria medication… French lessons have continued in full force. I have officially finished my first book in French called “Under the Storm” am headed off to my next one by a French man called Balzac. It is dense… The great part about taking French lessons still is that it forces me to save my money, because every Franc I give Pierre is a Franc I have to wait at least 3 weeks to spend. Also, it forces me to venture into the world of excessive vocabulary that even my teacher isn’t familiar with. As for my secondary project, things have really come together. The Parisian, or Baba Oyingbo as the locals call him, offered our group his car to head up to Ouesse to see the Center for Children in Difficult Situations which was built with the help of a PC Volunteer (Sebastian) who oddly enough got the largest part of his funding from my cousin’s wife’s grandmother. Because it was recently built, we thought it would be valuable to see what sort of obstacles we could avoid, not to mention that we could see what sort of work we could do together, assuming that a center of sorts is built in my town. Well after this trip, Mr. Djosse (my French teacher), Mr. Waaby (a community member who helped the last volunteer), and Mr. Urbaine (the Parisian) were all pretty much convinced that this was going down in our town as well. It was funny because I was still thinking about whether or not these guys were sold on the idea, but Mr. Urbaine just said one day, “when we build the center etc.”, and since then it has moved into the planning phase. Sebastian's Center for Children in Difficult Situations We will form an association with the help of the said members as well as Ms. Saka who works at a local NGO for UNICEF and Madeleine, the woman with whom I do savings and credit groups. The purpose of the association will be to protect vulnerable children by supporting them so as to obtain the bare necessities (food, clothes, school, lodging). The function of the physical center will likely be a place for the kids to stay until a suitable family can be found to take them in. Basically, it will be to let the kids be kids, so they don’t have to worry about anything but what a kid should (homework, friends, fun). Currently, we are working on drafting statutes and rules, all of which have French that I do not completely understand. I have to take everything home and read it with my dictionary to understand completely. Don’t worry,though I know what “Richard nous donneras tous de son argent” means. Really, what we are doing was explained as somewhat of a formality. The one part that worried me was when we arrived at the part concerning the powers of the Executive Director, who is hired by the General Assembly (much like Universities have Presidents and Chancellors). The reason that it made me nervous was because my French teacher, who has hinted at wanting to become director, was not satisfied that the Executive Director could not vote regarding committee decisions. The Executive Director is paid, while the others aren’t. I don’t think that he completely understands that Executive Director doesn’t mean “Supreme Ruler”. For me, it was fun to see people getting heated about things like this, just because I feel like truth isn’t always given a chance here. It’s more just who can seem right. In a setting like this, it is pretty much on the table. I think my teacher needs to learn the phrase “conflict of interest”.Church Ketou paved So anyways, the statutes are done, and next we’re off to make rules and visit other orphanages. I’d estimate that by the end of January I’ll have put together the plan to apply for cash and start fundraising. As for the name, they threw around about 20 different versions of Center for, Center of, Center concerning , the support and accommodation of vulnerable children and families. Creativity isn’t really their strong point here. I threw in the idea of choosing something that represents our goal. So….I present to you all…LE BOUCLIER. (Go get your dictionaries out, you’ll laugh). It’s cheesy, I know, and is still subject to change, but they were all so excited that they didn’t even want to try another name. I think it gets the idea of protection across…even if the TV show stars a man puts the hurt on evil men. Things to look forward to: 1. My new house. I didn’t tell you I’m moving? Oh, well I am. Running water, kitchen, shower, AND TOILET. So much for getting my water out of a well and pooping in a hole. I have enjoyed it, but it’ll be nice not to have to worry about getting bit by mosquitoes while I’m doing my business. 2. Mobile banking. Fraser and I have been brainstorming, and I’m about to flex my ever illusive networking muscles. 3. CHRISTMAS! I bought a baby tree and put singing lights on it. It’s just like home! 4. World cup? Prayer Requests: Guidance with all work, especially with Le Bouclier. Patience with the general absence of punctuality (and attendance) for the majority of people here and the sense to not let it rub off on me Continued good health for all the volunteers A rejuvenation of faith during this holiday season

Eka Ro and Bonjour! Figure I’m due here for a quick entry. Things are going well! This week I got to start my formations for accounting for illiterates AND literates. I’m also in the early stages of planning out whether or not I’m going to build an orphanage. I’ve been keeping relatively busy also with my French lessons. I’ve been doing them for 2 hours, 4 days a week. Honestly, I didn’t realize how beneficial the Peace Corps would be in terms of my own education. For 1500 CFA and hour, a little more than 3 dollars an hour, I get my own personal tutor. Considering that I paid about 35 dollars an hour in the US, I’d say that it’s a pretty sweet deal. I’m also learning a little bit of Nagot from him that I’ll be able to use at my formations.

Trombone lessons

In an attempt to not forget everything that I learned in college, I’ve decided to start a science club. I thought it was a good idea after I ran into this kid at church who has been trying like crazy to build both a model airplane and model helicopter. I’d like to get a consult from my fellow alumnus of U of I Engineering: Please look at the attached pictures and let me know your professional opinion about why these craft aren’t flying. Please ignore the cords that are attached to them. Funny as it is, I’m actually really impressed with how crafty this kid is and even though there is no way these things will ever fly short of having a rocket attached to them, I admire his curiosity. He even managed to rig up motors that he took out of radios to make the propellers turn. He powered them using either an adapter plugged into the wall or a stick of about 6 D batteries taped together. He says he “kinda” likes math, so sadly I don’t know if I’ll be able to recruit another enginerd.

As for the formation, I guess it was more of just an introductory thing. Normally, Madeline(pictured here) and I go to the formations together, but this time she was running late. So, because I had done 2 lessons of Nagot, I felt confident enough to do one on my own. Ha. What really ensued was me standing awkwardly in front of a group of confused women while frantically searching for the Nagot word for blue, red, green and the different denominations of money. I guess my only saving grace was that I was actually speaking some Nagot, which amused them. Once my friend did finally show up, my group seemed a little tired from counting colors, circles, squares and converting them into numbers. I went into showing how they could use this, but because this wasn’t really an official session, I quickly noticed that they weren’t to content listening to me speak French (which they don’t know). When all was said and done, I’d say it was a partial success, I just hope they stay interested.

My house is doing alright, but I’ve been having problems with bandits stealing my bread in the morning (I think it’s just the girl next door). So, as any responsible Peace Corps Volunteer would do, I’ve hired a guard for my bike. I think people will think twice before trying to get through him. His name is Fauzad and he is 3.

Last weekend I headed to Porto Novo for a nice lunch and a gripe fest with all the volunteers. Andrew, who is the guy that I visited on my Tech Visit, and I just kinda stayed out of it. I’ve started to realize how easy going I can get when it comes to red tape and fun things like that.

It being Halloween, I guess that it wouldn’t be fair to not have a scary story to tell.

So after lunch, it was getting close to 3pm, so we figured we’d go hang out the local buvette and have a beverage. Well it started getting closer to 4:30 and I realized that I’d probably need to get going soon if I wanted to get home before sunset. When I got to the taxi station, I was informed that I was the first person to show up for a 9 person taxi and that the 5 person taxi had left literally 2 minutes before I got there. I wasn’t thrilled, because I had to leave my friends, beer, and English, and not to mention that I’d probably end up waiting another 2 hours to leave. Luckily, it was only an hour, but that put me leaving at 5:30 when the sun goes down at 7. So per usual, we crammed way too many people into the taxi and got underway. The man sitting next to me was a Pentecostal pastor that spoke English, so while it made for good conversation, I constantly had to defend misconceptions about Catholicism. Regardless, I still made another friend in town. I found out about half way through the trip that my new friend had come to Porto Novo on a moto which had broken down. This meant that we had to stop for another 30 minutes to strap this thing to the roof, and we weren’t even close yet. When we came over the top of a hill, I noticed that there was a wall of clouds coming in from Nigeria that was flashing like the 4th of July. Though beautiful, I was a little unhappy to notice that it was coming straight for us. As we started to get closer, I just sat in awe of nature’s beauty blah blah blah. It was really pretty neat, but as soon as we got to my town (which was at about 9:15) and everyone was out of the cab except for me and another lady, the skies opened up.

Really, I’d never seen a rainstorm like this before. There was lighting all around us and the rain drops felt like they were going to break the car open. Just as we were on the way to drop this lady off, the taxi stalled. As we were sitting there waiting for the storm to stop, I couldn’t help but notice the driver and the lady in the front say “Zangbeto” while they were speaking Nagot. Just what I would need is another run in with the Vodun in the middle of the scariest rain storm of my life. So it was nearing 10PM, and I started wondering when this storm was even going to end as water was quickly pouring into this 30+ year old Peugot. I realized that my headlamp, which I had debated buying before coming, was waterproof up to 1 meter! So I handed it off to the driver who pointed it straight at his nose after strapping it to his forehead, which I think effectively blinded him. He must have known the engine pretty well because he managed to fix it and we got underway. After dropping off the lady at her quartier, we headed back up the goudron to my place. The driver refused to pull up to my quartier since it is nestled back in the woods. So, I strapped on my headlamp, rolled up my jeans, and said a little prayer. Just as I was about to step out, a lightning bolt crashed about 200m up the street and knocked the power out. The driver looked at me kinda funny, and I gave him a “here it goes” look and I hopped out. At first I was a little confused because I didn’t remember there being a river in my quartier, but I guess that it only shows up during torrential rain storms. As I was sprinting back I just remember frantically repeating “Jesus don’t let me die” over and over again in between flashes of lightning. The last river I needed to pass was literally about knee deep and I almost got knocked over trying to ford it. As I recall, fording the river was always the thing that got you killed in The Oregon Trail, but there were no ferries or caulk handy, so I was forced to take my chances. I lost 4 oxen and Timmy drowned L . So after drying off, I managed to get some sleep. Probably the scariest Halloween I’ve had since the Hambone Haunted House. Needless to say, no more traveling at night.

Alright, that does it for me. Happy Thanksgiving if I don’t get a blog up by then! Odabo!

Prayer Requests:

Continued guidance with the possible planning of an orphanage.

Continued diligence with French and Nagot.

Safety and happiness of all the volunteers.

Getting close to 3 months now. It’s been quite a ride. Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time with the women’s savings groups. Madeline, who is the woman with whom I go to these groups, speaks French to me but Yoruba to everyone else, so most the time Im left pretty clueless as to what is going on so I have started reading or studying French vocab words. Occasionally I help fill out the cards saying how much the women have saved at each respective meeting. As for cultural differences, most the women have babies, and wearing shirts is not mandatory for them, so to put it simply, there are boobs everywhere. Id liken it to guys having to wear shirts in the states; people feel more comfortable when you are wearing one, but it isnt mandatory. Needless to say, I get blindsided about 4 times an hour because Ill be reading a book and then look up to see a baby breastfeeding. The CLCAM, which is the savings and credit institution that is sponsoring me, has already started about six different groups that get loans from the CLCAM contingent upon their saving 3000 CFA a week, giving 600 CFA at each of their five meetings. With that, each member can receive a loan of 30000 CFA, or the equivalent of 60 dollars. In order to receive this loan, each member also pays 2% interest back to the savings group and 1% interest to the CLCAM. So in order to receive 30000 CFA, each member ends up paying 900 CFA. Each one of the meetings, 300 CFA goes to the personal savings of each member and 300 CFA goes to paying back the loan of each respective member. Finally, the last stipulation is that each member must have some form of business, which is simply verbally confirmed. There is no need for any sort of documentation to prove this fact, which I kind of found funny seeing as how this sort of lending policy is what created the mortgage crisis and worldwide recession. I guess the only difference is that the individual loans are only about 60 dollars, as opposed to 200k, and the members in the groups are supposed to keep each other accountable so in case one member misses a payment, the other members will be able to make up for that loss. It works very well with the communal living that is the way of life here. The cool thing about this model is that each group is also taught the value of saving their money during each of the formations.

So you might be wondering why this is useful for me. Most of the women in the city here aren’t educated at all. Meaning, they don’t know how to read or write, much less speak French. It really is a perfect area for me to start doing formations of accounting for illiterates. All I really need to do is find a person to translate for me. In addition, I think I’m going to do a little experiment by doing one formation where I try to teach basic addition and subtraction, then go into accounting. With the other group, I’ll go straight into the basic system that was developed by the Peace Corps. The reason that I want to do this is because it’s really easy to make mistakes using the illiterate system, whereas with the number method, a calculator could be used (and calculators aren’t expensive at all). I just want to see which one is quicker in the long run too. The artisans also look excited to work with me, and I think that their counsel is starting to realize that America is not going to foot the bill for their new meeting hall. Although, I do think that they see the opportunity to take out a loan from the CLCAM in order that they can build it by themselves.

As far as secondary projects go, I am still on the lookout, but my French teacher has informed me about the amount of orphans that there are in my town. It’s actually pretty appalling; 20% of just one of his classes have lost at least one parent. He told me that they typically only go to school for about 6 years and then drop out. He added that there is really no center in town for orphans. Before I came to Benin, I was in contact with another volunteer who built an orphanage at his post as his secondary project. Obviously, this is the classic “saving babies” example that you hear about in the Peace Corps, but if the need exists, there is definitely a potential for me to do some real good in this town.

As far as my personal life, things have gone well. I made pizza at my house on a stove!!! It’s not as hard as you might think…just no cheese. I’ve had the opportunity to hang out with other volunteers once a week. Not much new about that. On Friday, I went to confession. It was my first confession in French, which proved to be very interesting. It’s the first time I’ve had to use my dictionary to look up a whole bunch of sins. The cool thing about learning new languages is that all new experiences present opportunities to build your vocabulary, so now I know how to say “I swore” in French, among other things. So the way confession works is pretty much the same in the states. I guess the biggest difference was that they confessional was in open air, and the priest faced the crowd, which kind of defeats the purpose of having the screen that keeps him from seeing who it is because he can see everyone as they approach. Not that it would matter for me anyways; I was probably the only person who did his confession in French out of the whole group, not to mention my accent. I spent the first 20 minutes at the church before my confession reviewing my conscience and dictionary, writing everything down in my notebook so I wouldn’t forget when I got up to the confessional. While the confessions were going on, there was also an adoration happening in Nagot. As I was waiting in line, I just quietly observed the priest scrambling from the confessional to the altar and then back again after he left the Eucharist on display. When it came to be my turn, I nervously walked up to the confessional, and sat down. I explained that this was going to be my first confession in French, all the while noticing the priest had to lean in with his ear pressed against the screen to try to understand me. At the pauses in my confession, the priest started to talk, and I had to kindly remind him that I wasn’t finished yet. Each time he’d softly laugh. I could tell that he was in a hurry once it was his turn to speak, and I could also see that things were wrapping up by the alter. He kinda scrambled through advice, and then I read my act of contrition in English though because I always keep one of those in my wallet. As soon as I finished, he sprung out of his chair and quickly navigated his way to the altar. To this day, I still don’t really know what my penance is, so I just did what I always do. It was a pretty cool experience, and has definitely helped get my faith back on track.Last Sunday was the festival of Saint Theresa of Avila(maybe), which is the patron saint of our church. After a 3 hour mass with 3 different choirs and languages, there was a party with music, dancing and food. It was a blast and I even got a chance to have a beer with the head priest of the church who speaks English fluently, Father Agnude (really not sure about spelling). He was probably the most educated man that I’ve had a conversation with since I’ve been here that was not affiliated with the Peace Corps. I imagine though if there is anyone who would know the needs of the poor in the community, it would be him. I’m sure that he and I will definitely be working together for the next few years. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures L. Don’t worry; it was exactly what you imagine.

On my way home from the festival, I was passing the dirt park that is by my house. The men who own the corn field right next to it had just pulled up the dried stalks and piled them up in the middle of the park. There was a group of little kids who were playing in it, jumping in like I did as a kid with leaf piles. That event really stuck in my mind because during stage, there was an activity we did where we had to describe something that was unique to the US, or at least Europe, and leaf piles was one of them. I got bachelor parties…I’m sure those of you that know me can imagine the awkwardness that ensued from me describing that. But anyways, leaf piles. Not to be too cheesy, I guess it was just one of those simple events that reminded me of our common humanity, which is one of the things that drew me into coming in the first place.

I’ve also been taking French lessons and have had the chance to have some more intelligent conversations. One of the more controversial things that came up was whether or not women should have an education, which led into the question of whether or not there would ever be a female president of the United States. First off, even though I like my teacher, I really couldn’t believe how far back he dialed the civil liberties clock by saying that it is better to have women uneducated because then they don’t argue with you. I tried to explain that in addition to having a spouse that is your equal, you can both have interesting conversations, and at the very least, I tried to explain to him that children that have smarter parents are typically smarter too. He just kinda held his position that women should stay at home, make food, and take care of the children. As far as a female president is concerned, I kindly reminded him that Hillary Clinton (even though I can’t stand her) was a few super delegates away from getting the presidency. Continuing to hold his belief that women are too irrational to run a country (what about Margaret Thatcher?), the conversation started to trail off into other politics.

I guess what I took from this is that in a town like mine, I DON’T AGREE WITH, but can understand how the men could think that there is no way that there will ever be a female president of the United States; there simply aren’t many educated women here. I think with the younger generation, which still isn’t 50-50 boys to girls at school, people will start to realize what the rest of the world started to realize decades and centuries ago about women; they are just as capable and intelligent as men; not to mention prettier ;).

Alright, that’s all I got. Feel free to hit me up with some emails, but the internet card that I bought really sucks so I can only check my email once or twice a week.

Prayer Requests:

-A continued attitude of tolerance and understanding in my conversations with the people that I encounter

-Continued good health

-Success in finding a secondary project for the community as well as success in my primary projects

Well I’d like to start off by apologizing for just disappearing. It’s what some here call “Peace Corps Dark”. But, since my arrival at post, I’ve been a little preoccupied with just getting myself into a normal routine. Though my house is finally setup, I still think it could use a little work as it kind of has….how do I put this…a “jail cell” feel to it. At first it’s a little unnerving, but I must say that the whole sense of my experience so far has just been learning to humble myself and deal within my means; being okay with settling for something that isn’t as great (materially) as I’d hope it could be. Swear in was neat. There were some imortant people there whom I cant remember, but I will let the pictures do the talking when I get the uploaded. But with that, I’ll just start off with a brief summary of what I’ve done since I got here.

The Sunday I showed up was pretty shocking for me. I had to go back to the other volunteer’s house, which was filthy, at best, to retrieve some of his stuff. I later explained to one of the other volunteers that it reminded me of a post-apocalyptic video game I played as a kid called “Fallout Boy”, where you had to go around rummaging through the ruins of abandoned buildings to find things that, if repaired, would be quite useful. Well that’s pretty much what happened. I got 3 book cases, an armoire, a kitchen table, 4 chairs, two little end tables, and then another large table, which proved to be quite useful after I got rid of the mound of mouse poop and dead cockroaches that had accumulated over the last two years (the last volunteer didn’t cook). Needless to say, I’m a little surprised that I don’t have the plague now, but after refinishing the big table and washing EVERYTHING that I got from his place in bleach, I think that I’m well on my way to not having diarrhea for another 2 years.

That night I headed to church with my neighbor, Charles, who plays in the choir there. I told him that after I get settled in, I’d love to start playing in it as well (or at least sing, but I have a guitar now). The mass was completely in French, and actually tolerably short. Maybe that’s because the power went out and a giant storm was rolling through, but either way, I couldn’t understand the priest. Kind of a mumbler. After the mass, Charles and I walked back to our neighborhood while I stubbed my toe on probably about 10 camouflaged rocks along the way. Once we got off the main road, it was more like walking on the bank of a river than a path. I guess rain washed paths will do that to you. Falling a sleep that night was pretty terrifying. I was fortunate to find out that I’m not the only one living in my house; I have a colony of ants that continually burrow through cement, a family of pet mice, spiders and then the always popular cockroach. Thankfully, the last volunteer left me a few mouse traps and they have thus far caught 4. Apparently the reason I have so many pets is because nobody has lived here for 6 months, so they have had time to grow. I remember on my post visit seeing the tallies on the wall of how many mice had been killed there. He got up to 33 and then stopped counting, so thank God that I’m not at that house anymore! So after waking up a few times during the night to the sound of tiny feet scurrying across the floor, I finally got some solid sleep and woke up the next morning ready to kill. Needless to say, that was probably the worst night I’ve had since I’ve been in the Peace Corps.

Setting up the house was a gradual process. It was kind of difficult deciding where to put stuff because after the carpenter came, a lot of things were going to change. My self diagnosed ADD definitely showed up here as every task was interrupted by another task, which was interrupted by a mouse, which was interrupted by a cockroach, which was interrupted by someone coming to visit. After all was said and done, I think it took me about 7 days to get everything put away where I wanted it. When the carpenter came, my main goal for him was to make a hole in my table for a sink, which would just be a basin with a hole cut out of the bottom connected to a poorly fashioned hole in the wall that is not the lowest point in the kitchen area. How anyone washed dishes here before without taking a bath is beyond me!

As for food, I have been getting off to a slow start. Preparing beans here is a lot more difficult than the canned “Bush’s Baked Beans” I used to have for supper every night last year. I’ve turned into somewhat of a vegetarian after seeing how much effort goes into killing and cleaning a chicken. Quite honestly, it’s just not worth the hassle. Still, it’s better than eating everything fried or pat in snot sauce. I do miss good meat though, a lot. I’m sure as soon as my slap chop shows up here, I’ll be a cooking machine!

So you might be wondering, “Rich, it’s nice that you’ve moved in and are comfortable now, but when are you going to start doing something with your life?” That’s a fair question; one that I’ve asked myself as well. Well fear not, because the Artisan’s Association is in the process of trying to convince me why you, my fellow Americans, should help foot the bill to build them a sweet new meeting hall. At first, their plan was hurled because, in their opinion, the place they had wasn’t big enough to house all of the artisans. True as that may be, the plan for the building quickly changed into a training center for orphans and children after I told them that Americans would be more keen to donate their money to people who are really in need (i.e. orphans, single mothers, children, homeless people). Basically, because the last volunteer had helped to construct a handball court for kids and Americans had paid for about 65% of it, they assumed that the same would happen for them simply because the Peace Corps works with them. So, to humor them, at the second meeting, I brought a blank feasibility study with me to leave with them so that they could start to get some concrete ideas. The last question that I wrote was, “why do you believe that your project is more important to the community than other potential projects that could be funded”. That to me is the most important question, and I gave them that feasibility study because I wanted them to realize that if they took my time and resources to build this building, they would potentially be stealing from orphans, sick children, single mothers. If they don’t have a problem with this, well then I guess I’m just going to have to be blunt with them and say I don’t think that it will work, but at least this is helping them to get their ideas together while showing them that I am not just a black check with “USA” signed at the bottom. When it comes down to it, they just don’t need this building to be better artisans, they just want it so that when other artisans come to visit, they can think, “wow, these guys are ballers”. And I guess that brings me to my next lesson that I’ve learned time and again about relativism and capitalism: if some guy has a nicer thing (even if it isn’t that nice from a worldly prospective) someone else is going to want it or something better, or they won’t be satisfied. Oh ya, and nobody will ever really be satisfied as a result. It’s just human nature.

Sorry for the rant. Anyways, to wrap it up, these first 2-3 months won’t have too much intensive work, rather, I’ll just be finding out what the bigger needs are of the village as well as getting acquainted with local artisans and women’s groups so as to be able to facilitate effective formations. In addition, I’ll be trying to find what sort of secondary projects I can do, like the handball court, so I can involve folks at home too.

Don’t forget “Dieu te Regardes” J . Take it easy!

So here it is folks! My home for the next two years! Again, I can't say where it is, but I will say that it's beautiful. After meeting my homologue, I had to make it to the market at 7:30 am so I could catch a ride up to post. After cramming into a taxi with Jackie, the volunteer one town over, we headed to post. The second half of the ride was beautiful, not to mention spacious, because I was literally alone in the taxi. We actually passed one of the other taxi's on the way up, which had like 10 people fit into an 8 person vehicle, and then there I was completely alone. It was pretty funny.

Upon arrival, I noticed that the CLCAM was just next door to where I was dropped off, and since that's where I'll be working, I just walked in the front door and introduced myself. Everyone there was really friendly, and as I discovered in the following days, incredibly capable and reliable. Obviously, since this is the institution on which I'll be depending for any kind of advice for the next 2 years, I was obviously pretty excited about it.

Evan the Giant, as he's affectionately known, is the guy that I've come to replace. He's 6'7", so I think it might be a shock for the Beninese to not get a cramp in their neck when looking at me. Evan was a pretty cool guy. It didn't seem like anything really bugged him, which I suppose is the ideal attitude for a PC Volunteer. Over the next few days, we slowly made our way around the town, once in a while stopping to point out where the good places were. I got a chance to meet the Chief of Police, who took down my info and informed me to make sure I respect the traditions of the town…check. I also got to meet the king of my town, who is apparently the most powerful Yoruba king in all of Benin and Nigeria.

He has a palace and a throne, but I couldn't take a picture out of respect. When I met with him, he was extremely kind and well spoken (I guess anyone is who speaks French fluently), and he even spoke some English! After asking me if I have any questions, I kind of froze up and just repeatedly said, "I don't know" in French. He smiled and continued on in. After that, we headed to the Sacred Trash Pile (it's exactly what it sounds like). Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera on me, but I did notice while climbing it that people in my town eat a lot of escargot!

It was at first pretty overwhelming, but at one point, the other volunteer had to meet with someone and I got the opportunity to walk around by myself. Though the children probably call me Iyovo more here than in Porto Novo, it seems that adults don't do as many double takes as you walk by. I hope that I'll be able to at least have one strip in the town where everyone knows my name. So on my walk, I introduced myself to some folks, but I also stopped off at the bakery. I started talking to the women outside, who continuously asked me how my wife is doing…ha. I told them that my family is part owner of a bakery in the states. Not 2 minutes later, the owner of the bakery came out and introduced himself to me, and after a bit of me explaining, he was happy to show me around. Overall, the place looked pretty awesome, and I told him that I'd be happy to work with him on some business process management, not to mention giving him some other ideas. Either way, I have a bakery 2 blocks from my house and fresh French bread every day!

My house is simple. I was surprised to find out that I didn't have a toilet, but rather a buggy latrine. I suppose it'll just add to having that "classic" Peace Corps experience. I do have electricity though, so I will be quite content not having to set my solar charger outside every day. Overall, I'm sure I'll have to repaint…and stuff. It'll be interesting to see how I handle all of the bugs. I am at least ½ the distance that the other volunteer was from the center of town too, to it will be easy for me to head home and make myself lunch. I can't wait to start making Italian food!!! Just gotta wait until I get my slapchop….

The last thing I did before heading out of town was go to the inauguration ceremony for the handball court that the other volunteer had built. With a maximum 75% of the funding coming from the US, this is a great way for communities to get a hand up while still having to take some ownership of the project. It was great to see that Evan had another project that was outside of SED. It's nice to know that I can mix up my responsibilities while I am there as well and not be stuck with CLCAM the whole time. Overall, I am glad that Evan has paved the way for me in giving the Peace Corps a good name and putting me in contact with the right people to be able to get some valuable work done.

With that, I'll leave you all with some pictures of my trip to Ouidah, where I got to see the sacred forest and the OCEAN! It was not without a bit of a melancholy note though as we also had the honor to visit the slave trade trail where thousands of Beninese were sold off to Brazil. Ok, I'm out, and under a 1000 words!!

I'm working on the pictures, theyll be up saturday probably.

Pics were sparse, but the next post will be good, I took a bunch, I just have to write it. Talk to you soon!So last week didn’t have much going on until Thursday. On Thursday, everyone in SED got a chance to go to various businesses in the neighborhood of the school to get some information on their business, and if they wanted, we’d teach them some basic accounting. And when I say basic…believe me, all you need to know how to do is arithmetic. I got to go to a little photo shop, where the guy had pictures up on the wall that I swear were at least 15 years old, and not because he’d been doing it for a while. Alfred was the owner, and he couldn’t have been older than 30. After talking to him a bit, he showed me his shop, which was about 10 feet deep, the back 5 feet of which were his studio that had a random painted city in the backdrop. His equipment consisted of an antique camera and a video recorder from the beginning of the 90’s. He had told me that he was currently saving with the CLCAM in Porto Novo, but was distressed at the fact that CLCAM wanted some sort of collateral to go along with their loans when he got the opportunity to take one out. I guess this problem is something that I should probably look into when I get to post, but I’m sure that there’s still a path for this guy if he’s really serious about improving his business. Even so, after speaking for a while, he seemed smart and willing to learn some accounting. I took care of that the next day Accounting for the basic business is divided up into five books, or cahiers. There is the cahiers de caisse, which pretty much takes care of all transactions, then the cahier de stock, which controls stock, and the cahiers de credit which track the suppliers and buyers. I did a really basic lesson in which we just did a sample inventory and what happens to the cahiers de stock and caisse when items are purchased, created, or sold. Like I said: basic. Anyways, he got a little confused at the end, so we decided to break until a later date. I would bet that that day never comes, but at least I got a little practice for post. After class on Friday, we had the chance to visit 2 different Vodun sites in Porto Novo. Both were pretty neat. These are some religions that have been around for a long time, but because they didn’t really have any recorded history, nobody really knows when it began. The first place we went to had this tree in the middle of the courtyard that they would worship and keep different types of festering water beneath it. Apparently, putting this water on wounds is supposed to have magical healing powers…I don’t know. Then across the courtyard from the tree was a little hut where the Fetish is kept. When I say fetish, I’m referring to what the locals consider a physical manifestation of a spirit that lives in whatever respective inanimate object they have picked. We didn’t see the fetish in this place, but to give you an idea, the Zangbeto, which is another Vodun, walks around in what looks like a giant pile of hay. As you can see in the picture, there is some sort of melted junk at each fetish part which is supposed to also have different healing powers. I still have a really hard time taking this stuff seriously. After this site, we took a bus to the second Vodun site. The high priest, which was a really elderly man with a mouth half full of teeth. His fetish was represented by a pile of cola beans. The man sat us down on some benches right next to the small walled in hut where he kept the fetish. A whole pack of what I’m sure was children and grandchildren just stood there watching us and saying “Yovo” quietly once in a while. He told us that the fetish must be performed 5 days a week, except for Monday and Friday, which is when he needs to rest to have sex... ya it caught me off guard too. The fetish was called Thron. He never really told us where it came from, but he did tell us that its main purpose was to combat sorcery. As we finally entered to see the fetish, he told us that normally we would have to be naked when we entered, but he was willing to make an exception for us if we just took off our shoes. We happily obliged. Upon entering the gate, we say a small walled in garden with different colored cola beans in the middle. Upon sitting down, I couldn’t help but notice that I was sitting on the same bench that naked men and women normally sit on. I felt like a cowboy ready to draw with my hand sanitizer as soon as we got outta there. The old man sat on the ground in front of us and played around with four rocks, which supposedly were supposed to tell the fetish to do something, depending on the way that they fell when he dropped them. We were all a little baffled. So after about 10 minutes of some sketchy translation, he wished us well and told us that because we had come to the fetish, we would now be blessed with whatever we wished… be it money or babies, we’d get it. Finally, he gave us some “sacred oil” to put on our faces that smelled curiously like brut, which I was quite honestly thankful for given the other options of what it could have smelled like. The weekend was relatively uneventful after that besides picking up about 15 pounds of ground beef for burgers on Sunday. The butcher didn’t bother to put our meat in water proof bags, so the poor zemi driver got cow blood all over is crotch on the ride back, whereas I just got it on my foot. Today, we finally met our homologues, who will be our contact in the neighborhood when we get to post. Mine is named Fakorede Kola Charles. He’s a 28 year old accountant and manager at CLCAM and quite honestly seems awesome. He’s full of energy (or so it seems), and the only flaw I can find so far is that his mind kinda wanders when I’m searching for the right words to use in French. I’m sure I’ll compensate for that at some point, so I think we’ll make a good team. He further reinforced the point that I’ll be helping with formations and making sure that the artisans in my town will be informed about the opportunities that they have to take out loans as well as save with CLCAM. I was told that I’ll be busy all the time, which by Beninese standards is kind of hard to judge. Either way, I’m sure I’ll figure it out I have my post visit on Wednesday, so I’m fairly certain that I’ll have plenty to write about, not to mention having a plethora of pictures of my future home. I’ll be staying with the volunteer there as well, so I’ll have a great chance to see what the good and bad parts of my village are. It’s very exciting! Stage is starting to wear on me, simply because I feel as though I learn quicker just by speaking to people as opposed to being in class all day, so I’m certain that this will be a very welcomed break from the classroom. That’s all I got…take it easy! Prayer Requests: Safety for all the stagiers as we travel to our respective posts and a safe stay as well.

So I’ve heard through the grape vine that my posts have been a little lengthy, so I’ll try to keep this one a little bit shorter. Last week we had our technical visit, which has a few objectives. It’s right in the middle of stage, so we’re starting to get a much better idea of what we’ll be doing when we get to post. As a result, they wanted to give us a chance to see what the life of a typical volunteer is. In addition to that, we are supposed to also get an opportunity to relax for a few days and speak some English, and just get an idea of what it’s like to eat what we want to for a little bit.

Our adventure started by taking some Zemis to the market in the center of town, where we thought we negotiated a private taxi to Ahdjouhn, which is where we were headed for the visit. After picking up some wood and illegally smuggled Nigerian fully leaded gasoline (that’s how all of it is), we were on our way. I kept a keen eye on the guy in that back seat who was sitting in front of my bag, but I was told that he’d be crazy to steal anything from me as the taxi driver is ultimately responsible for my stuff. He’d prolly just light the guy on fire who tried to steal my things (and I’m not kidding, that’s just how things go here). After getting outside Porto Novo, we encountered some “Terre Rouge”, which is French for “red earth”, which is a fair description of the roads here. Luckily, it hadn’t rained in a while, so the roads had become relatively flat (for Beninese standards, I don’t think we got above 30 MPH). Once we approached Ahdjouhn, Andrew, the SED volunteer we were visiting, started talking to the driver to try to solidify the price. Well apparently, there was some miscommunication, and instead of paying what we thought was 3500 CFA (total) for 5 of us to rent a taxi for an hour, we ended up paying 4500 CFA. For those of you who are worried about my wallet after that, just know that it’s the difference between 7 dollars and 9 dollars…for 5 people…total. However, I was told that when you’re only making 180 bucks a month, you have to stop looking at the money in dollars….because then it just gets too easy to spend it. After a talk with the taxi police, they ruled that we were actually in the wrong. But there is that old adage “the customer is always right”, and in this case, even if we weren’t, him being a jerk to us cost him another fair to bring us all back to Porto Novo. What goes around….

After arriving, we unpacked and Andrew took us for a little tour around the village. Adjouhn was quiet, simple, and really provided the first natural beauty I’d seen since showing up. It is set just aside a river (whose name I forgot) that had recently flooded. This made for a spectacular view of the valley and flood plain. The picture really doesn’t do it justice. There was a wide array of housing for people, but most folks lived in mud huts. After greeting everyone in the village that we saw (literally), we had a chance to hang out in the garden, which is in the middle of the village. After a few refreshments, we headed back to Andrew’s house. He had spoken about another Non-Government Organization (NGO) that was in the area that was sponsored by the EU. Hoping that I’d run into some Italians, I suggested that we head over to say bonjour. Turns out there were no Italians, but we did meet the director, who was very cordial and gave us suggestions about all of our respective posts. Their goal as an NGO was to stop child trafficking, which is a really big problem in all of Western Africa. Though sex trafficking does happen, the larger problem is more when parents in Benin will send their children to Nigeria in exchange for money. Having children is a little different in Africa as it provides more mouths to feed, but also more hands to work on the house. In a sense, it is kind of how people invest in their own future. Back to the story.

So after our talk, we headed back to the house for a nice break of reading and nap time. It was nice to just have some time to myself that allowed me to relax a bit. Stage itself is fun, but when you are in an environment where everything is new, it’s also really draining. The rest of the week doesn’t need a play by play, but we did get a chance to go visit the CLCAM where Andrew works some of the time. It was nice to see some organization in a business that required a little more than stocking the one book case you have with an assortment of rice, peanut products, and other handy knick-knacks. CLCAM itself works as a savings and loan institution. In order to receive a loan, you must save with them. Each month, one will deposit however much money they want, and in return, CLCAM takes 1/31 of the money. This seems pretty expensive, and it is, but when there is such a large demand for lending, CLCAM can do this.

So since the beginning of stage, we’ve heard rumors that we’d learn how to kill a chicken. I finally got the opportunity. We were told to be at a friend of Andrew’s at 10 am, where his buddy’s wife was waiting with 2 chickens with their feet bound. So not to get to graphic, the way you kill a chicken, is first give it some water, and then tuck it’s head back so it can’t see you (apparently that’s bad luck). Then just make a small incision on the neck to let it bleed out. Sadly, after we let it bleed out, it started flying…so I had to lop off its head. YIKES

The other highlight of the week included a trip to a self-sustaining farm. To save some cash (and this is normal), we headed out there as doubles on a Zemi. That means that we had 3 people total on the motorcycle. Don’t worry, we have helmets :P . It was still pretty awkward though. The farm was great. It used the waste from the animals to fertilize the plants which would then go to feed the fish and rabbits. The guy who was running the place, named Pascal, actually started building some bungalows at the site that he is going to start renting out to people who want a place to get away. We get a special discount! It was incredible to see this guy’s motivation, and I’m sure that sometime we’ll head out there for a little down time. The ride back, though less scenic that than ride there, was far more eventful.

I explained in an earlier post about Vodun (or voodoo as it’s known in the states). Well, as we were heading back, the driver of our motorcycle stopped and told me that Laura, who was riding in back of me, needed to cover her head. I couldn’t figure out what he meant at first, but then I remembered how women aren’t supposed to see the Vodun because if they do, within three days, they will just drop dead…but not before getting a phone call! Sorry, that was insensitive, but it’s really hard for me to take this religion seriously when people claim that these guys can turn a man into a Yam. Other volunteers had told me that encountering Vodun was normal though, so I was a little nervous, but at least I’d been told ahead of time. To be culturally acceptable, the taxi driver took his sweaty shirt off and gave it to Laura, who then proceeded to put it over her head, then put the helmet on over the shirt (we need to wear that or else we get kicked out of the Peace Corps). So here we are, driving through a village with three people on a motorcycle, one of whom basically has a bag on her head. As we turn a corner, we start to hear drums and there were two men about 100 yards ahead holding an ivy rope across the road, signaling us to stop. As we started to get closer, the drums got louder. A group of men ran up to the moto and started cheering and banging drums. They were all smiling, so I wasn’t too spooked, but Laura had her head covered, thus limiting her vision, and Beninese people are generally really loud, so to her, it sounded like they were yelling at us. I can’t imagine what must have been going through her head! A bunch of crazy eyed tribesmen with spears and shrunken human heads about to turn us into some sort of starchy vegetable is what I like to think. Anyways, they just wanted some money for the “toll” that everyone has to pay to pass, so because I only had 500 cent, or 1 dollar, I gave it to them. Normally you give like 25 CFA, so they were elated. They were patting me on the shoulders while I’m sure Laura thought I was getting beat up. I kept telling her “were ok” and “it’s just a group of men, nothing scary”. Either way, I don’t think there was much I could say to make her feel better given that she was riding blind, three deep on the back of a motorcycle in West Africa. So after cheering for a little while longer, they lowered their vine gate, and we zoomed away. Laura was visibly shaken after she took off this guy’s smelly shirt, but I just kept thinking about how tough these Peace Corps girls are. I think I would have peed my pants, which wouldn’t have been too good for the person in front of me…unless it was really cold. So that is all: crazy African story #1 in the books.

Getting back from Adjouhn wasn’t too bad. Just hopped on a zemi and zoomed on back. Not only was the zemi more fun, but it was oddly more comfortable because we didn’t hit nearly as many bumps. Yesterday, Papa and I had a chat (finally) about Christianity and Islam. It was great for about 90% of the talk because he was just explaining how Ramadan works, why they do it and so on. He also started showing me the parallels between Islam and Christianity (a LOT), and it really just gave me a sense of peace and community with him. But then….uh oh…we got into differences. He did most of the talking (mainly because of French), but needless to say, when you can’t defend your faith because you literally don’t know what the words are that you need to use, it’s frustrating. We just left it at, I don’t know why Catholics can eat pork, but I’ll get back to you on that. To him, I feel like any argument is a win/lose type thing, which is a far cry from what my discussions back in the States were. It was vaguely reminiscent of when I got into some arguments with my cousin Alfredo, in Italy, who is about the age of a grandpa. Religious arguments without citable facts never work out too well (call me if you want clarification on this, Fraser). Anyways, it was a great experience, and if nothing else, two hours of pure French.

Finally, today I had a neat experience where I misunderstood my sisters and brothers. I thought they said, “we need to go pray now”, and I said “ok”. Well what they actually said was “we”, including me. Still misunderstanding, I dropped to my knees and said, “ok, but when we pray, I need to pray like this”. Well I thought that maybe later we were going to go somewhere and pray, but they all dropped to their knees too and said “Soyez!”, which is kinda like “go”! It was really funny, because we were just hanging out with Mama by the well talking, and then all of a sudden there were a bunch of people of different faiths on their knees praying. Anyways, I thanked God for my “famille” here and asked that he give us whatever we need to be happy. They asked for money and food, which I guess equals happiness for some folks, especially in the world’s 9th poorest country. After the prayer, I headed off to bed.

I’m just so happy so far with my experience here. I’m starting to see how relative poverty really is. Everyone in the world has everyday life. If you are alive, you know what everyday life is. It’s just a matter of what a person values that determines how satisfied they can be with that life, everyday. People here in the capital don’t have much…at all, but they also don’t really realize what they don’t have, and that in itself is what I think makes anyone’s life seem normal. In a sense, the relative poverty that everyone shares here helps maintain the happiness of their life. What isn’t acceptable, and this is me the Peace Corps Trainee talking here, is when poverty results in preventable deaths and preventable crimes. I guess that’s one snippet of the reason that I’m here. Sorry to get all preachy, just thought it was a thought worth sharing.

And once again, I’ve gone and dropped another 6 pages of my life on the internet…sorry….deal with it. Thanks again for reading!

Prayer requests – That I’ll keep having good talks with my Papa and that I get more chances to share what I believe, assuming the other people want to find out. As always, the continued good physical and mental health and safety of the volunteers as we start to finish stage.

So happened since last time. I actually had to look at my personal journal to get a little refreshed. I guess I’ll back it up to last Saturday. So it’s become a tradition now (since it’s happened twice) that the SED and TEFL volunteers meet up on Saturdays at the Cactus Bar to hang out for a while. Some of the posted pictures are from that event. After that I headed home to meet up with my brother. The plan was originally to go to “Panama”, which is a “nightclub” in Benin. In reality, it’s just kinda some dude’s porch. I had originally invited my friends to come out with us as well, but on my bike ride home, by brother had sent me a text saying that he was too tired to go out and had apparently informed the entire neighborhood of this, so nobody was ready to go. Long story short, I temporarily forgot French and couldn’t convey the message that I needed to tell my friends that we weren’t coming anymore. The more I asked if I should tell my friends that we weren’t coming, the more my brother delayed my answer. After about an hour and a half of waiting, we met up with my friends at Panama porch. The club was quite an event. First off, there are hardly any women there, and those that are there are apparently of the “women of the night” (at least from the local crowd, I’m about to get beat up by the Peace Corps girls :P) So it’s a whole bunch of dudes, my group of American friends, and me. The club had its fair share of creepy guys too. I don’t think I’ve ever pulled the “sorority girl save” so many times in one night. If you’re wondering what that is, it’s what you see at bars back in the states when a guy tries to dance with an uninterested girl. The difference is, in the states, the guy will stop chasing her, while here he thinks he’s invited. In addition, with the giant lack of women at the bar, it’s a little weird seeing all these guys dance with each other. Homosexuality is a big no-no here, but apparently dudes dancing up on each other and holding hands while walking down the street is totally normal. Go figure. So after a sweaty night that I’m pretty sure got me this cold I’m getting over, I headed off to bed. The next morning, my brother woke me up at like 8, bear in mind we got home at 230, and then proceeded to instruct me on how to deal with the day after going out…in general. I tried to explain to him that it wasn’t my first rodeo, but they don’t have rodeo’s here so he kept knocking on my door. Apparently, the drill is: eat, shower, eat, sleep again. TIA. I did make it out to mass again, which was nice this time because it was only 1:45 long, but unfortunately, I showed up about an hour early. Apparently that’s what you get for asking what the Catholic mass times are from your Muslim friends. No biggie though, I just ended up praying for a bit. Monday was French…all day. I think it was about 6 hours total, and even though I love speaking French, 6 hours of any type of instruction can make anyone bored. Tuesdays are “administrative” days, which can equal tic-tac-toe, hangman, or a new one called stix that I just learned. Most the time I’m listening, but sometimes I get a little bit frustrated with having to be told how to avoid malaria (ie: keep mosquitoes away, take your pills, etc). I guess that’s part of the red tape of being in the Peace Corps.

Kinda random, but the pic to the left is my neighborhood.

Wednesday was the fateful day of the broken toe. After class we headed over to the soccer field at the other school. Now my papa had told me to make sure I played with shoes wherever I went…but nobody else was so I figured I’d take my chances. What I thought was sand ended up being up being just really hard, red earth and what I thought was a very stubbed toe ended up being a broken toe. It wasn’t until a chunk of skin came outta my other toe that I stopped playing. Oddly enough, neither of the injuries ended up being painful at all, at any point, and are currently healing well. I figured I’d wait it out for a day, but when I saw how swollen it was the next morning (check the pic), I figured it might be a good idea to talk to the doctor. Before I did, I wanted to get a chance to make our presentation that was planned for the next day called Accounting for Illiterates.The first of August was the Beninese Independence Day. 'The first of August, proud to be Beninese

So the deal is, in Benin (and most countries where the Peace Corps is), there is a big problem with small businesses not accounting for their expenditures and income. Another common problem that goes along with this also includes not knowing how to read or write. Luckily, the Peace Corps has devised a system which allows people who are illiterate to accomplish this seemingly simple task.

So the first picture is how money is represented. The left column represents the symbol for the money, and then the right indicates the value. Now I put together a little exercise for those of you who want to keep you minds fresh during syllabus week. Try to calculate what each of the values are, I flipped the answer and put it a little further down. Keep in mind, if you can’t figure it out, the only excuse you should have is that you are below the age of 3. Just wait, I bet I got one of them wrong. And, yes, I do have too much time on my hands….and Microsoft paint on my computer. So anyways, if you got the numbers right, you can then see a little further down how we represent numbers with tick marks. Basically, the way the actual accounting book works is that there are a series of columns, each column has a denomination at the top, and the top left corner has the month. Each respective row has the day of the week, and with each day, depending on whether or not it’s the income or expenses sheet, each purchase is accounted for and then summed at the end of the week. .

The experience itself was great. We had to present in French, but luckily, the people that we were presenting to didn’t know French either so we had a translator translate everything into Gun (Goon), which is certainly a language that I should learn before I leave . That made us seem a lot smarter than we actually were. Neat. They asked a lot of questions, and by then end seemed really interested in having another class. One of our volunteers will be posted there, so hopefully he’ll be able to get them some supplies and follow up on that. One might ask, “why not just teach them basic math?”. I too have asked that question…and quite honestly I will probably give that a shot when I get to post. Apparently this method is able to at least get someone in the habit of keeping track of where their money is going because there are some businesses that frequently run in the red without even knowing about it. In addition, this is something that is really easy to pass on since its just tick marks and colors, where as numbers can be a little intimidating. Either way, this was a blast and I hope I’ll be able to continue to do stuff like this when I get to post. That day, I also found out about my post assignment. Though I can’t say where it is on the blog, if you want to know, email me rich.pasquesi@gmail.com and I’ll send you my generic email about it. The work that I’ll be doing will be with an organization called CLCAM which does a lot of microfinance and savings. In addition, I’ll be working with women’s artisan groups to help them to get organized as best I can. I’ll give more details on this as my work comes at post. After we left accounting for illiterates, I made a call to the doctor to let him know about my foot issue. He told me that I needed to immediately get on the shuttle to Cotonou, which kind of upset me considering we were all going to celebrate finding out our post. What it did mean was air conditioning and a quite room to sleep in, so I guess it was a nice consolation prize. Overall, a great night still, and I got to use my laptop with the internet, which was a fine break.

The next day, I headed downstairs to the doctor’s office in my PJ’s and he had a look at my toe. After telling me that he didn’t think it was broken, he sent me off to the X-ray clinic just to be sure. After going into 2 different waiting rooms and then waiting another hour for my x-rays, it came back that the top of my big left toe was indeed broken. Still, it didn’t hurt, but it was weird to look at the x-ray of my toe and see crack. The doctor ended up sending me to another doctor, who ended up using the athletic tape I just happened to have to tape my toes together. I’ll be riding the bench for 3 weeks as a result, but luckily it’s half as long as a normal break and even better, it doesn’t hurt. It was just really swollen…goo. After hitching a ride back to Porto Novo, I kinda fudged the truth about playing without my shoes on to my Papa, and then headed off to some sweaty sleep. Saturday with SED TEFL was fun again. We made banana pancakes and hashbrowns. Delicious. The pic to the left is me going through pancake withdrawal.

Sunday was a crazy church day (again). JUST THE MASS, was 3 hours and 30 minutes. I left at 3 hours, which was well after communion. Apparently that’s not normal for it to be this long, but because there were 2 new priests and Marys assumption, they felt the need for an hour long homily in 2 languages and like a 30 minute jamfest in the middle. I’m all about church, but I had about 4 hours of washing my clothes to take care of later. Speaking of which, I don’t know if its that there isn’t as much dust or stuff in the US, but my family makes me clean my clothes until they are literally perfect here. Somehow all of the dirt comes out in the States with a weakly rotating spiraled plastic blade. I think it’s more that our thought of clean is “not smelly”, whereas theirs is “new”. Overall, I’m still really happy about my experience here. My French gets better every day and I’ve actually moved up a level in my classes. Next Wednesday is our tech visit where we get to visit a SED volunteer and see how everyday life is for him/her. Life is pretty stress free so far and I’ve been working pretty hard on everything. Not really feeling the whole “tons of free time” thing I’ve been hearing about, but apparently that starts when we get to post. I hope not, I like being busy. Alright, I’m gonna get out of here. Take it easy!’ Prayer requests: That my big toe heals quick, that French improves, and that I can start to focus more of my energy on preparing for next month’s move to post. Also, my older brother, Fauzi, has malaria, so a quick recovery for him (don’t worry, he’s had it before and the family doesn’t seem too scared) God bless!

On Wednesday, I moved in with my family. We got the picture of the families before hand, and as you can see from the pictures, not too many people smile here. Needless to say, the whole “not smiling” thing had me a little bit worried. My family is called Agnide. I have a Papa, Mama, three brothers and three sisters. My brothers; Fauzi is 22, Faraj is 20, Sabour is 9, then my sisters; Firdaus is 16, Mandjidath is 12, and Chade’ is 2. When we left Cotonou, we traveled to Porto Novo to a development center, which is where we met our families for the first time. When I was looking for my family, I had my Mama in mind, who, as you can see from the picture, is very visible (don’t worry, that’s actually a very good thing here. All of their soap opera stars are a bit on the plump side.) After wandering a bit, Firdaus tapped me on the shoulder and showed me to where Fauzi was sitting. After speaking in some pretty terrible French, I found out how old they were, and we eventually got in the bus to head to their house. Now there were some rumors that some of us would be staying with some pretty “rich” families, at least by Beninese standards. I pulled up to a gate and immediately some of my family was waiting outside to try to help me with my bags. As I headed to their house, I started to notice that our definitions of “rich” are different Hopefully, I’ll be able to take a video of where I’m living, but just to describe, we live on the bottom floor of what I’d consider a condo complex. As I walked towards the house, mama was outside cooking (which she always is), and as we headed inside, I saw my littlest sister sleeping like an angel on the couch. My other brother Faraj and my sister Mandjidath were also waiting to greet me. I was immediately shown to my room.

My room has one magnesium bulb for light for the whole room. Other than a desk with a chair and a mattress on the floor, I don’t have any other furniture. I have to admit that I definitely got a little bit of culture shock with this. I just kept on thinking “whoah…this is really happening! This is my life for the next 2 years!” After being shown the bathroom, which is a normal bathroom without any running water, dinner was up. They left me to eat by myself, which is apparently customary here. Dinner was great; some sort of potato, pasta, onion, tomato, and chicken mix. After thanking my Mama for dinner, I saw Mandjidath walking Chade’ around. I said in French, “Where’s my little sister?”. Mandjidath held her hand as she sleepily fumbled around the corner. As soon as she saw me, her eyes opened wide and she let out scream and started crying. Apparently I’m the first white person she’s ever come in contact with. The volunteer who was here last year was black and I think Chade’ was too young to know the difference anyways since she probably couldn’t talk. Well needless to say, she’s still pretty scared of me, though she does shake my hand sometimes and she even gave me a kiss on the cheek once. I told her that by the time I leave, I want to hold her in my arms…we’ll see! Soon after the cryfest, Papa showed up. I warmly greeted him as Papa, and he smiled and said in broken English, “How can you call me Papa? You just met me!” I don’t remember what I said as I was about to make one of the worst first impressions of my life. He asked me, “What is your surname?” and I replied “Pasquesi”. He said, “No no no, here, in Benin!” I couldn’t remember…just kinda said “ahhhhhhhhhhhgg” with a smile on my face. He gave me a pat on the shoulder and walked away. My brothers tried to reassure me that it wasn’t a problem, but with all the business training sessions I’ve been to in my life, the first thing that came to mind is that first impressions mean everything. Ever since then, it seems like Papa is constantly evaluating my French, which I appreciate, but I’m still trying to figure out whether or not he actually appreciates that I’m here. Again, time will tell. I unpacked a little bit and then gave Sabour the soccer ball and pump that I had brought from home. He seemed really happy and the whole neighborhood has been using it ever since. Papa hurt his knee playing with it and kinda gave me a dirty look about it when he told me, but I hope he understands that it’s not my fault that he tripped on my ball when I wasn’t there, nor playing. For all my friends in Italy, this would be the first time I just smile and say TIA (this is Africa). So after teaching them how to play hearts, I headed off to bed. They all stay up later than me and wake up earlier, so I really don’t know what to think about it. All I can say is “THANK GOD I lived in a fraternity!” because they are probably the loudest, albeit friendly, but still loudest people I’ve ever met. On top of that, the well/cooking area/hangout area is right outside my window which is always open, so I’m definitely reemploying the old “headphones routine” from college. The next morning I woke up to the call to prayer, which for all you non-Muslims out there, is one of five times a day the cleric at the Mosque gets on the loud phone and sings praise to Allah. In Saudi Arabia, everyone would hit the ground and pray every time they heard that, but the Muslims here have been described to me as “Friday Muslims”, likened to “Sunday Catholics” in the states. I guess that’s a good representation of my family as I have yet to see anyone praying. I did express interest in seeing their Mosque sometime though and maybe fasting a bit with them during Ramadan. Anyways, after another hour of interrupted sleep due to roosters and people at the well, I got up. After taking a bucket shower/bath, I had a breakfast of a whole baguette, margarine, and coffee tea (ya they mix them). I headed off to school after that with Faraj. The school is a compound of about six open air buildings. We don’t use their chalk boards, but rather big sheets of butcher paper. I’m in the middle level of French, but I’m hoping that I’ll move up in the coming weeks. I have been doing pretty well with it. For anyone in the USA who thinks that our schools are inadequate, ours’ here don’t have lights, rarely electricity, and the only air conditioning we have is the wind that blows through the slotted windows that are on the outside walls of the building. We need good teachers first, then work on the buildings (Props to Teach for America). Anyways, the first day was pretty simple, but pretty funny as there are a handful of us with digestive problems (thank God not me) who were running in and out of the room all day stealing the toilet paper from the front of the room. During one of the breaks, one of the local Vodun tribes showed up called the Zambeto. The specific “god” that showed up was the guardian, which was a man that was under what appeared be a stack of colored hay. Apparently, its’ responsibility is to guard the streets at night. We were advised that if anyone sees them at night and they don’t know their “secret”, it’s possible that things can get violent. Only last night did I find out that their patrol consists of a parade of loud drums and horns, so I assume that it’ll be pretty easy to avoid them should I hear them coming. After school, our bikes showed up (which are totally rad), and Mama showed up to walk me home. After getting home, I talked with the family a little bit about my day, what I learned, and then had dinner. After dinner, they asked me if I had a camera, and though I was a little reluctant to get it out immediately, I took some pictures of the family present. They just love seeing themselves on it! It’s kinda like some women in the states…”Lemme see…ewww I don’t like it…take another one” (inside joke for those of you scratching your heads). I was still suffering from some jetlag, so I headed off to bed. Friday was pretty standard, but I got to hang out with the family a little more. My brother asked me if I wanted to play some soccer, so I agreed and headed over to their field. The field is really just a half road, half open space. Their goals are comprised of 2 rocks and an assembly of sticks and are misaligned by about 20 yards. This is why soccer is the most popular sport in the world; all you need is people and some sort of ball. Anyway, all the kids in the neighborhood wanted to see what the Yovo could do (that’s what they call white people). Before going my Papa made a big deal about me wearing shoes, but it wasn’t until I got to the field that I understood why. Everyone was either barefoot or wearing flip-flops, and they were doing this while playing soccer, very well. One kid got a piece of glass in his foot too. Well needless to say, this big Yovo was sliding all over the place, and after about 20 minutes (it was prolly more like 10) of running my butt off, I called it quits. I’m just gonna use the excuse that I was jet lagged, but the PC has a game on Wednesday so we’ll see how that goes. After dinner and a bucket shower, I spent a lot of time just talking with my siblings about French, trying my best to absorb as much as I could. Saturday was interesting too. I got the chance to get my exercise equipment out and get a quick workout in. You would have thought that I was a professional athlete because it seemed like every kid in the neighborhood was over watching me workout and playing with my jump rope and elastic band. I kept hearing “ Oh Rich, tu es forte!” and apparently my performance has earned me the title of “Rich d’or”, or Rich the Golden (or something to that effect). I joke around saying that I’m “Rich d’eau” or “Rich the Watery”, as I down about a gallon of water a day. I didn’t really realize how much of a stereotypical American I am though. Blond hair, blue eyes, athletic, and my name literally means “rich” in French. Hopefully I’ll leave a good impression of what stereotypical Americans are like. Apparently my family is really popular around here, and there are people in and out of here all the time who are just friends of the family. It also makes me a bit weary because I don’t know if everyone respects my stuff as much as the family here does, so I lock up every time that I’m not at the house. Faraj took me on a “promenade” yesterday, where we just walked around town. Every little kid I passed would say “Hey Yovo!”, and a lot of times, I’d hear it from adults as well. The walk helped a lot to start to build a mental map of the city as well. Things are just starting to feel a little bit more familiar, but I have a lot more work to do with the language. Last night I helped out Mama with making dinner. Normally, she’ll cook over a charcoal stove, and for some reason, she doesn’t use any sort of candle, lamp, light…just the moon and the steady glow of the coals. I thought that it was pretty silly, so I went and grabbed my head lamp and strapped it on for her. She seemed so thankful, and I sat there with her the whole time she cooked for me. I’ve told her and my sisters, who pretty much take care of me, that I can’t let them continue to do everything for me. I think it’s pretty appalling how chauvinistic the culture is. Though I still consider my brothers friends, if they want a snack, they will send their sisters around the corner to go buy them something and not even say “merci”. Mama and my sisters do all the cooking, washing, and cleaning that there is to be done, while my Papa, brothers, and uncle just sit around watching tv or playing video games. I plan on using the excuse that “I have to learn how to live on my own” so that I can help them with stuff. I’ve started out by cleaning up after myself (thanks mom) when I eat, which they wouldn’t let me do before, and it will hopefully turn into me helping to cook and preparing my own breakfast. We’ll have to see how that goes. I’m confident that by the time I leave, I’ll be doing everything on my own short of cooking. Sunday consisted of biking around with the other volunteers. It’s nice to get a nice dose of English once in a while. One of the trainees, Eric, was doing tricks on his bike and somehow managed to bust the frame on one of the wheels. I guess that means no stunts for me. So overall, I really like my family. They are generally warm, curious, and protective of me. There is always something to do around here, and if nothing else, I can always study. I feel that we’re really growing closer. My situation here is funny too because in the states, I am the youngest and have 2 brothers, whereas here, I have 3 sisters and brothers and I am the oldest. Hopefully, in time, Chade’ won’t be so scared of me. Life is slow around here. Nobody is ever in a hurry to get anywhere, yet they are always curious about your life and how you’re doing. I have a feeling that I’m really going to enjoy myself here and I hope that my time here will continue to be as rewarding as it’s been. If anyone is ever curious about calling me, my number is 011-229-96-35-39-68 from US lines. If you’re calling with Skype, just select Benin on the country and then enter 96-35-39-68. I’m always happy to talk, and the best time to call me would probably be from 11 am to 4pm central time. Anyways, I gotta get moving. Take it easy and I hope to hear from some of you soon! Prayer requests: Continued good health and good health of the other volunteers. Also that I can continue to get closer with my family and learn French quickly. Thanks!

Bonjour tout la monde! Well what a few days it’s been. We got in on Friday night. The airport in Cotonou was pretty crazy with getting all the papers together and some of our baggage being suspiciously opened as it rolled out of the door. One of the girls put her backpack in a bag and when the bag showed up, her backpack wasn’t in it. Other than that, there were no casualties. As you can see in the first pic (and maybe video, not sure if I can upload it), they just got a rickety truck with canvas on the sides and threw all our stuff inside. We then got into a crammed “bus”, which was more like the size of a pickup truck, (pic 2) and drove to the Saint Jean Eudes, which is a Catholic retreat compound where we were shielded from outside for a few days. As you can see from the pic, we fit 16 people into the bus and it was pretty tight. When we showed up a group of the current volunteers came to greet us from the bus. It was oddly reminiscent of my days at leadership camp when we’d all run out to meet the campers. I guess a lot of the same types of people do it. So after dropping off our bags, we got to try out a Beninese dinner, which was hors doeurves (sp? I don’t know French yet…) and spaghetti. The meat was definitely different. After dinner we went to a little bar that is inside the compound and bought some beers, which can be dangerous because they cost about 500 Francs, or about $1.25 , for .63 liters.

The next day I woke up to crowing roosters, which apparently is a pretty standard occurrence. Luckily, that will keep us from sleeping too long. After a cold shower, I headed down to a breakfast of a baguette and butter and tea (not bad) and then did a whole bunch of administrative stuff. Lunch was the first of about 5 consecutive non-breakfast meals whose main course was a really boney fishy-fish, but apparently I’m going to love this stuff because one of the volunteers who’d been there for a year was just devouring it. After lunch, we headed to the Peace Corps HQ in downtown Cotonou and got more of a view of the city. To put it plainly, it’s pretty filthy. The pollution in the streets is worse than the worst streets in Chicago and there is trash and standing water/sewage on a lot of the outskirts. At first, I was a bit intimidated. I had seen some pretty dirty stuff in Bangkok and Beijing, but none of it really compared to this! The Peace Corps HQ is really nice. There is a bedroom just for the volunteers where we will be able to come and relax if we need a weekend to rest, internet access, not to mention all of the Assistant PC Directors who will be our bosses throughout this whole event. It is run like a military compound though with a big gate and spiked walls. So later on, I got to see my brand new bike and got my helmets; one for the bike and one for when I have to take motorcycle taxis. It is still an ongoing process, but I also got a chance to get 2 more shots in the arm. Still sore.

Later on, we headed to the camp, had dinner, and then the dance party started. We all danced until about 2 in the morning and I kinda felt a little bad since the place was outdoors. Apparently the Beninese would have done the same thing, so it’s not a big deal.

Sunday, the morning was full of a bit more administrative stuff and in the afternoon, we had the guy talk while the girls had the girl talk. I’ll just say that ours was much shorter and probably a lot more shallow, while the girls were talking for about 2 hours. They were just coming out of their meeting place when we were getting back from a walk. We got a chance to see one of the main road which is called several names, one of which is “the way between Lomo and Goudamay”. They really don’t have road names here…just landmarks. Along the walk, there was a kid peeing on the side of the road as we walked by. It was really surprising for me, but shouldn’t be since it’s something that I’ve heard is relatively common. Just kind of demonstrates the general culture here that people don’t really pay much attention to the cleanliness of the city. On the way back, we walked through the gates of the compound to see a crowd gathering in and around the church for mass. It would soon be what was probably one of the most grueling and fun experiences I’ve ever had inside of a church.

So after putting on my Sunday best, I met up with a group and headed to church. We asked some ladies outside and were told that there was space inside. That wasn’t entirely true. We entered the church and immediately started walking through trying to find a seat. I could just feel about 800 pairs of eyes drilling into the back of my neck. So when we got to the door on the other side, we turned around, and as suspected, everyone looked a little confused to see us. So we headed outside to try to find a seat there. In all, we estimated that there were about 800 people inside and 1200 on the lawn, which would make any priest in America have a heart attack. Just as we thought that we wouldn’t be able to find a spot, a women came up to us saying that she could find us a seat. I was placed next to a mother and her two daughters, probably 6 and 3 . I tried saying “thanks for letting me sit here” in French, but the little girl just rolled her eyes at me. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so small. So the mass started with what I later found out was a list of people who had donated to the church, then a deacon started saying how “If you give more money to the church, God will grant your wishes”. I’d say give to Cesar what is Cesar’s. I realize our church isn’t perfect, but it really upsets me when churches exploit people’s situations like this. Instead of telling them to save money to go to school so they can better their lot in life, they tell them to donate to the church. I’m not against donating to the Church, but I fear that they might need an education instead of donating, at least for the time being. The mass was pretty standard, longer, but standard. At the homily, the priest had us all stand up and thanked us for our service, and I guess I didn’t realize that the direct translation for Peace Corps, or la Corps de la Paix, is “The Body of the Peace” in French. So he went on to talk about how we are all part of one body, the church, and reminded them that all Catholics are all part of the same body of the church. Honestly, it was pretty neat. Since it was the loaves and fish reading, he also talked about how we need food for the body as well for the soul, peace. Overall, it was a good homily, but the really cool part was the offeratory. They started to play a song, and everyone started dancing a little bit, then the song started escalating and everyone was going nuts. Something that resembled a conga line started as people started dancing up to the front of the church to donate some cash. One of the girls, Sara, started dancing around on the way up and all the women in the church started cheering for her, so the other guys and I did too. We got back to our seats and that little girl who had been so cold to me earlier started showing me dance moves and singing. It went on for about 20 minutes, and I never thought I’d say it, but I caught a sweat in church from dancing! It was great. We were at about the 1:20 mark, and I thought we’d be done, but this was just the beginning. We had communion, sang, then the mass ended…but the service didn’t. Now we had adoration, were women gave testimonials in another language and then they walked around with the Eucharist blessing everyone. It took at least an hour. The priest just had a really flat look on his face as he processed around the church with the Eucharist and the women would bow down and talk to it, pleading, begging, and it was really moving. Given, this could be somewhat of a cultural tradition, but even though I couldn’t understand what they were saying, their expressions were definitely that of someone who was in a lot of pain. If it is genuine (and who am I to doubt), I am jealous of their faith, but feel bad that this many of them had something so seemingly tragic that had happened to them. It makes me thankful for my life and empowers me a bit to try my hardest while I am here to do what I can to improve the standard of living in this country. When all was said and done, I had kneeled down about 20 times and had been there about 3.5 hours. I was exhausted, but also astonished. After dinner and a beer with my new friends, I headed off to bed.

Monday was a great day. I had the chance to meet with my program, SED and see the kinds of things that I will be doing in the next day. After my interview with my director, I told him that I would prefer to either do microfinancing or work with artisans. My work experience indicates that I should probably work with artisans as it is a form of low level manufacturing, but microfinancing really interests me as well. It’s something that I understood very well in finance and something that I think is somewhat of a novel concept because it allows one to empower a community, particularly women, to improve their own situations. I was also asked if I would like a postmate, which would be another volunteer who lives in the same area as me that I could go visit if I needed to talk about something. I told them that I’d rather be with a postmate if given the two options, but if they couldn’t find anyone to fill the position, I’d agree to live on my own. Either way, I’ll probably be about 5 Km minimum away from other people. They also asked me what could make me leave, and I just mentioned that it would take a lot of problems over a long period of time, so I could probably deal with a lot, but I jokingly said that I hope it doesn’t give them permission to make me suffer :P . So we’ll see what happens with that. After the interview, it was time for zemidjahn training, which is what they call the moto taxis here. They taught us how to negotiate with the drivers and gave us a big helmet to wear, then we got on and did a lap around the block. It’s actually pretty fun. If you check out my video of the streets, you’ll be able to see an example of some folks riding around on them. That was pretty much my day, and I’m sure I’ll have many more stories to tell.

As for how I’m feeling about the experience, I’m very comfortable with everything right now, and having people around to answer my questions has heIped me a lot, not to mention having the other volunteers here to share the experience with me. It’s starting to become more familiar to me and I think that as of right now, I’m pretty much adapted. I’m very happy right now  . I move in with my family Wednesday night! Please send me any emails with questions at rich.pasquesi@gmail.com. Talk to you soon!

Au revoir!

-Rich

Prayer request: That everything go well as all the trainees move into our new homes with our stage families and that we adapt well to the change in language, food, and culture.

If you want to send me packages, you can send them to me at:

Rich Pasquesi, PCT

Peace Corps

BP 971, Cotonou

Then write on the package, Dieu te regarde. That means, God is watching you so i don't get things stolen. See ya!

*The opinions expressed in this blog are mine alone and do not represent the views or opinions of the United States Peace Corps.

Hey everyone! Well the last day has been great. I've met a bunch of incredible people and learned more about the challenge that lies ahead. Right now I'm at the Philadelphia Airport, and after plugging into the outlets, I finally found one with power!

Yesterday we were the last group getting in, but we still managed to check in alright without missing anything. We got some free time last night, as well as a $140 debit card, so we all went to the nicest restaurants and had a fun time out afterward. I had an interesting conversation with some guys in the special forces too and they gave me some useful tips on how to deal with folks in 3rd world countries. I was told to kinda be respectful and firm with how I run things because if I start off looking soft, it will be a lot difficult to get people's respect. They have an interesting insight as they are green berets and in charge of training foreign armies to fight. Were both kind of doing the same thing, except I'm training people to run their business responsibly and efficiently...no guns.

Today we got some free time and some friends and I walked around Philly just seeing the sights.

The airport was pretty nerve wracking. We were allowed 23 kilos per bag, 2 bag max. My 2 were under at 22 each, but my carry on was 21.5...yikes. One of the girls had some extra space though so we packed my books into her bags and left my sleeping pad and shoes on the floor for me to come pickup later so the security guy wouldn't catch us. Sneaky maneuver, but I justify it because I know that our average weight per person will be alright. Now I'm just using the internet that I got off of using my student ID, so to all you younger kids out there, never throw that thing away, you can use it forever.

So far things are incredible, and it's great to finally meet some people who understand what I've been going through the past few months and with whom I'll be able to share my struggles and accomplishments in the years to come. I have a feeling that I'll have some really great friendships (duh) that come out of this one.

Thanks to everyone for your support and love, and if there's anything I can pray for you for, just let me know! Thanks!

-Rich

Prayer request: Safe travels and getting through customs with as little stress as possible, and that my French improves quickly!

So originally, I selfishly wrote this before my party last week because I figured people would most likely be asking me the same questions all night. I ended up forgetting to bring it, and it ended up not being that big of deal anyways. But for those of you who are curious as to what I'll be doing over there , here's a synopsis. Where I’m goin - Benin. It’s a country in Sub-Saharan Africa just east of Nigeria on the western coast. it is the most peaceful and arguably most stable country in West Africa, so don’t worry about civil uprisings or anything. They are cool. Check out the screen shot for a picture. Here's the BBC article. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/country_profiles/1064527.stmWhat I'm doing at the beginning -- I’ll be spending the first 9 weeks of my time there in Cotonou and Porto Novo, which are the two largest cities in Benin. This time is known as “stage”, which will consist of training in language, culture, job orientation, and bike riding (I’m not kidding). It’ll be about 7 hours a day. I’ll be living with a Beninese family which will feed me and give me a bed.In return, I’ll help them with chores around the house as well as bring a little gift. I chose the slap chop but it showed up a little late so they will get Uno, a soccer ball and pump, and some colored pens. I know I sound cheap with my gift giving here, but apparently these are things that are really admired by the Beninese people according to my Peace Corps guide.What about when stage is over? - After my nine weeks in stage, I’ll be sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer on July 25th, strangely enough the day that my dad retires. After I’m sworn in, I’ll head to my post which will most likely be in the suburbs of one of the cities futher north, but it also could be in the rural parts of the country.What will you do at your post? – I will be in the Small Enterprise Development Program as an Organizational Development Advisor. Though my job isn’t very specific yet, here’s an idea of what I’ll be doing: -Helping artisans and tradesmen to organize their business by helping with accounting and marketing-Helping micro finance banks to educate citizens on the opportunity to take out a small loan -Helping their still developing tourism industry to build its rapport and create viable tourism destinations-Secondary duties of all Peace Corps volunteers include educating people on HIV/AIDS prevention Do you get vacation? – Yes, 5 weeks a year. I’ll probably be back once a year for 2 weeks, but I'm pretty sure that I don't get to leave for at least a year, so if you want to see me, come and visit...yo.Have you got your shots? - Yes, the Peace Corps is really serious about all their volunteers being ready for service mentally and physically, so don't go worrying about me and diseases, I'm as healthy as a horse (maybe a little overweight).How long is your service? - 27 months Are you nervous? - Ya, but also really excited! It's a change, but change is never something that people deal with easily. But after talking to a friend of mine who worked in Zambia for over a year, he reminded me that they are just like me, maybe with a few differences, and I'll be surprised at how normal the experience feels.

How can we contact you? My email is the best way (rich.pasquesi@gmail.com) as I don't have WI-FI all the time, but I'll be on Skype, my skype name is richard.pasquesi , so feel free to add me on there. Finally, when I get a cell phone, I'll post the number. If you really need to get in touch with me, just call me! Thanks so much to all my friends and family for your love and support. I wouldn't be able to do this without you! Please stay in touch and feel free to send me any questions that you might have!Love,Rich

PS- If there is anyone else you know that might want to get this blog, please pass it on to them. God Bless!